Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

Agency amidst adversity: poverty and women’s reproductive lives 97
The 1998 South African demographic and health survey (SADHS)
showed the total fertility rate (TFR) to be 2,9 children per woman.
This recent estimate is considerably lower than the 4,1 children per
woman revealed in the 1987-1989 SADHS. Although conceding that the
direct and indirect determinants of fertility require further study to
provide more conclusive research results, Mostert et al 17 maintain
that the progressive decline in fertility in South Africa has been
attributed to increasing contraceptive use to space births, rising
levels of women’s education, urbanisation, women’s employment and
changing economic conditions. South Africa’s family planning
capacities, extensively improved during the apartheid era, are a
consequence of what Caldwell 18 suggests is an experiment of global
significance. In the 1980s South Africa’s contraceptive prevalence
rate (CPR) was the highest in Africa — South Africa’s CPR (48%) was
followed by Tunisia’s (41%), Zimbabwe’s (38%), Morocco’s (36%),
Egypt’s (30%) and Botswana’s (28%). 19 This rate increased in the
1990s. The 1998 SADHS revealed that 61% of all sexually active women
between the ages of 15-49 and almost 67% of sexually active
teenagers were using modern contraception. Contraceptive use varies
between provinces. It is as high as 75% in the Western Cape and as low
as 55% in the Northern Province.
At the level of women’s education, there are quite positive signs. The
proportion of girls successfully completing their high school education
has been, over the years, consistently higher than that of boys.
Unterhalter 20 shows that 31,9% of girls and 25,9% of boys belonging to
the 1976 cohort, and 53,5% of girls and 38,1% of boys belonging to the
1983 cohort, completed their schooling within the normative timeframe.
Whilst a large number of pupils fail to complete high school,
the majority who do pass are women. In South Africa, attainment of
a high school education is also strongly linked to lower desires for
bearing large numbers of children and high levels of contraceptive
use. 21 However, it is conceded that these positive spin-offs are often
undermined in less developed countries by the high levels of poverty
experienced. It is also maintained that low fertility in the case of
highly educated women is linked more strongly to their occupations
and their husband’s educational level than their own educational
positions. 22
17
WP Mostert et al Demography. Textbook for the South African student (1998).
18 Caldwell & Caldwell (n 12 above) 250.
19 Mostert (n 16 above) 119.
20
E Unterhalter ‘The schooling of South African girls’ in C Heward & S Bunwaree
21
Gender, education and development (1999) 49 51.
G du Plessis ‘Reproductive choice and motivation in South Africa, 1987-1989’
22
(1996) 6 Southern African Journal of Demography 33.
Mostert (n 16 above).