Women’s Empowerment and Women’s Health in sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

The paper analyses the association between women’s empowerment and health in sub-Saharan Africa. Existing literature suggests that women’s empowerment influences reproductive health outcomes like fertility, birth interval and contraceptive use. The evidence, however, remains mixed and tends to be country-specific owing to the difficulties in measuring women’s empowerment and health. The study links different dimensions of women’s empowerment to women's health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries by building a multidimensional Women Empowerment Index. Using the Demographic Health Surveys for 26 sub-Saharan African countries from 2008 to 2020, a composite index is computed based on four main dimensions namely economic, social, psychological and legal empowerment. Second, women’s health is analysed using different proxies for family planning and maternal health. These are access to health facilities which helps women to benefit from improved control over their health, the use of contraceptive methods which gives women reproductive autonomy and seeking medical help and health insurance which allow women to improve their health. Governments across Africa have not been practical in taking on board women’s health issues, though various agreements have been signed. Poorly empowered women have led to a lack of essential health services for women leading to rising prevalence in the women reproductive health problems. The results show that there is a bidirectional relationship between women’s empowerment and women’s health across the region where women’s empowerment leads to better women health or on the other hand, healthier women are more likely to be highly empowered in the four different spheres analysed.