Pressure to have baby boys outweighs Congolese women's health concerns

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, women bear the pressure of having baby boys, even when it conflicts with their personal choices or their health.

Gloria Masanka almost died giving birth to her first child. She later lost twins and endured years of dangerous high blood pressure during pregnancy.

Now, holding her youngest daughter in her arms, she says she does not want any more children.

She said she doesn’t want to have more children. But she has two daughters, and there is pressure to have boys.

“Every day, for my in-laws, this is a concern,” she said. “The girls are going to leave. They will be...well, they use a term, they will be “purchased” by the other family.”

She herself is a working mom, employed as a radio presenter at Congo’s national broadcaster, and is frustrated at the views people continue to hold about women’s place in society.

"Today, we have daughters who are presidents of the Republic, we have daughters, women who occupy high positions,” she said.

“The African mentality –– although the world is changing, things are changing––but in other ways, on certain things, things don’t change."

Outside a local cafe, housewife Regine Ntumba said she had wanted to have four children. Now, she has six. Her first four were girls, and she finally gave birth to a boy on the fifth try.

Her husband, Prosper Mbumba, is a human rights activist who admits that his work conflicts with some of the cultural pressures the family is subject to.

“My culture and the cultural values, the family, all that, I was going to feel a certain absence because, indeed, girls are going to marry, children that girls are going to have, they are children who will belong to other families, to others to other nations,” he said.

Ntumba said she felt the pressure, too, though she would have been happy to stop having children earlier. “But it was not up to me. It is the man who has the last word,” she said.

Complicating the risks for women in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa is the pressure — heaped more on women than men — to produce male heirs to perpetuate clan lines.

Because daughters often marry men from different clans or tribes, sons are seen as necessary to sustain their forefathers’ legacies.

The belief is so entrenched that many women accept it as justified, even if repeated pregnancies endanger their health.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has one of the highest fertility rates anywhere in the world, at 5.9 children per woman, according to United Nations figures.

The rate is largely fueled by cultural considerations that favor early marriage and la