The choice of consensual unions: case of Bamiléké-Bamounes and Beti-Bassa-Mbamoises women

Moise Ngouloure Njoya, Ministère de l'Economie, de la Planification et de l'Aménagement du Territoire (MINEPAT)

Consensual union is defined as a kind of couple formed without custom marriage, religious marriage or civil marriage. Our research is focused on the Bamiléké-Bamounes and Beti-Bassa-Mbamoises women. Our aim consists to find out the factors of the choice of such unions among those ethnic groups and mainly their interactions. Ours findings express a contradiction between Bamiléké-Bamounes women and Beti-Bassa-Mbamoises women. Despite the fact that permissive traditional rulers lead to consensual unions among Beti-Bassa-Mbamoises women, we observe on the other that: the access to the incomes, schooling prolonged, and urbanization favor the adoption of the consensual unions among Bamiléké-Bamounes women while they lead to the marriages for the Beti-Bassa-Mbamoises women.