Women’s Economic Empowerment and Household Wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa: Case Study on Malawi

Abstract

The ratification of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 calling for efforts to achieve inclusive economic growth and improved lives for all by 2030, re-focused the discourse highlighting the need for equal access to economic resources among women, and their full and effective participation at all levels of decision-making. The SDGs called for consolidation of efforts to accelerate women’s economic empowerment (WEE) globally, with WEE increasingly viewed as the cornerstone to achieving the SDGs and inclusive economic growth. Thus, government efforts should focus on empowering women economically by providing them with an equal playing field with men. To achieve this, there is a need to understand the extent of WEE, its drivers and barriers, and its relationship with various key areas for economic development. To contribute to this knowledge, I explore the extent of WEE in sub-Saharan Africa and the association between WEE and household wellbeing with a focus on children’s education outcomes and household consumption patterns.
I focus on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as the region lacks research on WEE, and has the highest gender inequality and poverty rates globally. Poverty is an issue particularly among women. In parts of the thesis, I use Malawi as a case study for further investigation to better understand the association between WEE and household wellbeing. Malawi has unique characteristics where women have relatively better decision-making opportunities, such as high levels of land ownership and female household headship. Its dual lineage system provides opportunities to study WEE in the context of varying levels of access to and control of assets and decision-making between men and women.
In the first empirical chapter, I investigate the heterogeneity of WEE in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 33 countries, I estimate the level of WEE in each country and identify the associated factors. I demonstrate that WEE is overall low but varies markedly by country. It is mainly driven by one or more of the following factors among women: educational attainment, employment, and land ownership. I identify five typologies of WEE: 1) instrumental agency driven by high educational attainment; 2) instrumental agency driven by land ownership; 3) individual economic advancement driven by high employment rates; 4) basic level economic empowerment; and 5) low-level economic empowerment.

In the second empirical chapter, I investigate the association between WEE and children’s education outcomes in Malawi. I analyse mothers and their school-age children (6–25 years) within the household using the 2016 Integrated Household Survey (IHS). I fit two-level random-intercept logistic regression models to estimate the association between WEE and three outcomes: i) timely progression through grades; (ii) ever attending school; and (ii) current school attendance. I demonstrate that mothers’ WEE is significantly associated with their children being on-time for grade and having ever attended school, but not with current school attendance. The association depends on place of residence: children in urban areas were more likely to be on-time for grade than those in rural areas when their mothers were economically empowered.

The third empirical chapter explores the association between WEE and patterns of consumption expenditure within the household using the Malawi 2016 IHS dataset. Around 12,000 households including a female household head or a wife of the male household head (index woman) were included. I examine whether the share of total household expenditure allocated to essential goods (food, education, health, and clothing) or non-essential goods (alcohol and cigarettes) depended on the level of WEE of the ‘index woman’, and whether the associations varied between matrilineal and patrilineal households and the gender of the household head. I fit linear regression models separately for urban and rural households as the consumption patterns vary considerably between the two. I show that higher WEE is associated with higher relative budget shares allocated to children’s education, health, and clothing, but lower shares for food consumption. There was no association between WEE and expenditure on alcohol and cigarettes. There were differences between urban and rural households in the association between WEE and household expenditure that could suggest that better outcomes in urban households.

The key contribution of my thesis is threefold. It 1) identifies five typologies of WEE in sub-Saharan Africa mainly driven by educational attainment, employment, and women’s land ownership; 2) quantifies the positive association between WEE and children’s education outcomes; and 3) quantifies the association between WEE and household consumption patterns. These findings provide better insights of the dynamics of WEE in a low-income country context and can be used as a baseline for future studies to explore the extent and progress of WEE over time. The results also inform policy development and programme interventions aimed at improving WEE, which may lead to positive outcomes in children’s education and household consumption in sub-Saharan Africa and more specifically in Malawi. Finally, the results provide timely evidence for the heightened interest in achieving WEE.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Eunice Mueni Williams: orcid.org/0000-0002-6657-4889

ORCID for Heini Vaisanen: orcid.org/0000-0002-5494-0415

ORCID for Sabu Padmadas: orcid.org/0000-0002-6538-9374

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