Two decades of theorising and measuring women's empowerment: Literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

Since Kabeer's insightful and influential article in 1999, the research in the field of women studies from the perspectives of women's empowerment has gained immense significance in the academic discourse. This study examines how scholarly research on women's empowerment has evolved over the past two decades by conducting a comprehensive literature analysis. We first compiled the bibliometric data using the Scopus database. The bibliometric data included 916 articles published in 427 peerreviewed journals by 1845 authors during 1999–2019, citing the influential work by Kabeer published in the July 1999 issue of the journal - Development and Change. The analysis suggests that research on women's empowerment has primarily been a multidisciplinary field with journals from diverse disciplines publishing articles on this theme.The analysis identifies the most influential journals, authors, and centres of excellence that have shaped women's empowerment research and unearths the sub-topics related to women's empowerment, which have been in vogue in recent times. The topics trending currently include interrelationships between gender equity and empowerment, measurement of women's empowerment, dimensions, and consequences of women's empowerment. These themes present fresh opportunities for aspiring researchers to align their work in this field. Our analysis makes a significant contribution for researchers interested in women's empowerment by providing a historical perspective, tracing the reason for the spurt in research output, establishing linkages between the articles, and identifying the emerging areas within the broad theme of women's empowerment.