The SWPER index for women's empowerment in Africa: development and validation of an index based on survey data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Sustainable Development Goals strongly focus on equity. Goal 5 explicitly aims to empower all women and girls, reinforcing the need to have a reliable indicator to track progress. Our objective was to develop a novel women's empowerment indicator from widely available data sources, broadening opportunities for monitoring and research on women's empowerment.

Methods

We used Demographic and Health Survey data from 34 African countries, targeting currently partnered women. We identified items related to women's empowerment present in most surveys, and used principal component analysis to extract the components. We carried out a convergent validation process using coverage of three health interventions as outcomes; and an external validation process by analysing c

SUBMITTER: Ewerling F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5554795 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature