Women's economic empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from cross-national population data
Women's economic empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from cross-national population data
Background: women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has attracted high-level policy interest, and is recognized as a central, cross-cutting outcome, and the cornerstone for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. However, it lacks a standardised definition and standard, measurable, and comparable indicators, and is plagued by large data gaps, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Objective: we examine the extent of WEE in SSA. Our goal is to identify WEE country typologies explaining the variation in and contributing domains of WEE in each country.
Methods: using recent DHS data in 33 countries, we apply principal component analysis to generate a WEE score based on 9 indicators in order to better understand the contributors underlying this score and derive country typologies.
Results: overall, WEE is low but it varies markedly by country. It is typically explained by educational attainment, employment, and land ownership among women alone or in combination with men. We identified 5 typologies of WEE: (1) instrumental agency explained by high educational attainment, (2) instrumental agency explained by land ownership, (3) individual economic advancement explained by high employment rates, (4) basic-level economic empowerment, and (5) low-level economic empowerment.
Conclusions: the level of WEE in SSA varies by country. The factors affecting the level also vary and can be divided into 5 typologies characterising the type of WEE.
Contribution: Our results provide timely evidence for the increasing push to achieve WEE and highlight potential priority areas for policy and programme interventions.
415-452
Williams, Eunice Mueni
7a9afbb7-b595-49e9-b86b-d77efa441009
Vaisanen, Heini
ee5b9497-7825-4fd8-8b7e-3d5d2b164766
Padmadas, Sabu
64b6ab89-152b-48a3-838b-e9167964b508
15 September 2022
Williams, Eunice Mueni
7a9afbb7-b595-49e9-b86b-d77efa441009
Vaisanen, Heini
ee5b9497-7825-4fd8-8b7e-3d5d2b164766
Padmadas, Sabu
64b6ab89-152b-48a3-838b-e9167964b508
Williams, Eunice Mueni, Vaisanen, Heini and Padmadas, Sabu
(2022)
Women's economic empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from cross-national population data.
Demographic Research, 47 (15), , [15].
(doi:10.4054/DemRes.2022.47.15).
Abstract
Background: women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has attracted high-level policy interest, and is recognized as a central, cross-cutting outcome, and the cornerstone for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. However, it lacks a standardised definition and standard, measurable, and comparable indicators, and is plagued by large data gaps, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Objective: we examine the extent of WEE in SSA. Our goal is to identify WEE country typologies explaining the variation in and contributing domains of WEE in each country.
Methods: using recent DHS data in 33 countries, we apply principal component analysis to generate a WEE score based on 9 indicators in order to better understand the contributors underlying this score and derive country typologies.
Results: overall, WEE is low but it varies markedly by country. It is typically explained by educational attainment, employment, and land ownership among women alone or in combination with men. We identified 5 typologies of WEE: (1) instrumental agency explained by high educational attainment, (2) instrumental agency explained by land ownership, (3) individual economic advancement explained by high employment rates, (4) basic-level economic empowerment, and (5) low-level economic empowerment.
Conclusions: the level of WEE in SSA varies by country. The factors affecting the level also vary and can be divided into 5 typologies characterising the type of WEE.
Contribution: Our results provide timely evidence for the increasing push to achieve WEE and highlight potential priority areas for policy and programme interventions.
Text
Williams et al. 2022
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 22 July 2022
Published date: 15 September 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
Eunice Williams was supported by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) as part of her hP D studentship. eH ini Visnä en and Sabu P dmadas received no specific funding for this work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Williams, Väisänen & Padmadas.
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 471205
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471205
ISSN: 1435-9871
PURE UUID: 2fae1993-53c7-437b-b0ba-529515bd973b
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Date deposited: 31 Oct 2022 17:46
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:40
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