Abstract
Background: Women's status and empowerment influence health, nutrition, and socioeconomic status of women and their children. Despite its benefits, however, research on women's empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is limited in scope and geography. Empowerment is variably defined and data for comparison across regions is often limited. The objective of the current study was to identify domains of empowerment from a widely available data source, Demographic and Health Surveys, across multiple regions in SSA.Methods: Demographic and Health Surveys from nineteen countries representing four African regions were used for the analysis. A total of 26 indicators across different dimensions (economic, socio-cultural, education, and health) were used to characterize women's empowerment. Pooled data from all countries were randomly divided into two datasets—one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the other for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)—to verify the factor structure hypothesized during EFA.Results: Four factors including attitudes toward violence, labor force participation, education, and access to healthcare were found to define women's empowerment in Central, Southern, and West Africa. However, in East Africa, only three factors were relevant: attitudes toward violence, access to healthcare ranking, and labor force participation. There was limited evidence to support household decision-making, life course, or legal status domains as components of women's empowerment.Conclusion: This foremost study advances scholarship on women's empowerment by providing a validated measure of women's empowerment for researchers and other stakeholders in health and development.
Highlights
Women’s empowerment and gender equality concepts are important in fostering health and human development
Pooled data from all countries were randomly divided into two datasets—one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the other for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)—to verify the factor structure hypothesized during EFA
Scree plots showing the eigenvalues of the underlying factors derived from EFA are shown in Figure 1, with initial EFA by region shown on the initial EFA by region shown on the top and final structure on the bottom
Summary
Women’s empowerment and gender equality concepts are important in fostering health and human development. Empowerment describes the process of change wherein an individual with prior inability to choose has the access and freedom to make choices (Kabeer, 2005). Gender equality is achieved when both men and women enjoy the same socioeconomic rights and opportunities and have equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes (World Bank, 2012). Gender equality can be effectively achieved through empowerment, comprising three broad categories, namely (1) agency, which describes the ability to make decisions regardless of existing power relations; (2) resources—including health, education, and physical assets—are the channels through which agency is exercised; and (3) achievements—such as economic opportunities and improved socio-political status—the outcomes of agency (Kabeer, 2005). The objective of the current study was to identify domains of empowerment from a widely available data source, Demographic and Health Surveys, across multiple regions in SSA
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