Fertility among female teachers in the Kulaijaya District, Johor: A quantitative analysis

Women and work are becoming increasingly inseparable. Higher education is enabling women to gain skills and good jobs and change their present status and role. Consequently, women tend to postpone marriage and limit their family size. This paper examines aspects of fertility patterns among 108 female teachers from seven secondary schools around Kulai. The main focus was on the relationship between selected variables with the fertility of female teachers. The result showed that the majority of teachers had heavy and very heavy school workload. This had an indirect influence on their fertility rate. The study also found a significant relationship between the variables of ethnicity, age structure, age of marriage, length of the marriage, length of family planning, ideal number of children and family income with the fertility of the female teachers in this study. Overall, women’s career pressures had exerted a significant impact on fertility and consequently population growth in Malaysia.