Development of a Survey-based Women Empowerment Index for Afghanistan (SWEIA): An Explanatory Analyses of the Afghanistan Demographic Health Survey 2015

Abstract

Background Although there are several scales to measure women empowerment, the multidimensionality of women empowerment introduced enormous challenges in the quantification and comparability of the results across different contexts. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to develop a country-specific index to measure women's empowerment in Afghanistan. Methods The data from the 2015 Afghanistan demographic health survey (ADHS) was used for the analysis. The dataset was randomly divided into two samples‒one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the other for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)‒ of women aged 15–49 years. The data on 26 variables across different domains (labor force participation, attitude toward violence, decision-making, access to healthcare, literacy, age at critical life events, and property-owning) were used in EFA to probe the underlying domains in the data. CFA examines the structural validity of hypothesized factors in EFA. Results The final model included 22 indicators across seven domains including labor force participation, attitude toward violence, decision-making, access to healthcare, literacy, age at critical life events, and property-owning. Discussion The index developed in this study shares a common ground for future research concerning Afghan women empowerment and its associated outcomes such as intimate partner violence, reproductive and maternity outcomes, and child health; thus, enhancing the comparability of the results. In addition, having a standard index for women empowerment at the individual and country level could help assess the progress and efforts that have been made to achieve gender equality (SDG 5), and guide the direction of future policies and interventions.

Women empowerment and access to maternity and reproductive healthcare in Pakistan: cross-validation of a Survey-based Index in Afghanistan (SWEI-A)

“…Data analysis was conducted in four steps following the procedure from our previous paper [4]. First, the variables were extracted from PDHS 2017-18 dataset and either recoded or retained in their original forms for factor analysis (Table S1), then the dataset was randomly split into half using the STATA command "splitsample".…”

“…This study was a cross-validation of our previously developed index measuring women's empowerment in Afghanistan (SWEI-A) [4] to be used among married women aged 15-49 years in Pakistan. The original index was designed to measure women's empowerment in Afghanistan across seven domains; namely, labor force participation, attitude toward violence, decision-making, access to healthcare, literacy, age at critical life events, and property-owning; however, our analysis showed that the 6-factor model-excluding the property-owning-could better explain the woman empowerment among married women aged 15-49 years in Pakistan with an acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.70) and construct validity (SRSEA&SRMR < 0.05, CFI&TLI > 0.95).…”

“…A total of 26 important variables related to women empowerment [15,16,20,[26][27][28][29] including those from our previous study [4] that were available in 2017-18 PDHS, were selected for EFA CFA. All categorical variables were either recoded or used in their original format based on their suggested direction and influence on women empowerment so that the categories with higher ranks represent higher levels of empowerment and those with lower ranks indicate low empowerment [16,28].…”

“…Although gender-based issues are widespread global concerns, in some poor-resourced countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, these issues turned into a humanitarian crisis and have undermined the current efforts to achieve equal shares for both genders in the country's socioeconomic development [4,5]. In both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the culture and gender-based norms introduce a huge gap in order and hierarchy of society that recognize women inferior to men with less power and authority in decision-making [5][6][7].…”

“…Against this backdrop, we developed a survey-based country-specific index; namely, survey-based women empowerment index in Afghanistan (SWEI-A) [4] that demonstrated promising structural validity and internal consistency in measuring empowerment among married women aged 15-49 years in Afghanistan using the relevant indicators from the 2015 Afghanistan Demographic Health Survey (ADHS). Since Pakistan and Afghanistan-two neighboring countries-share ethnocultural roots that impact women empowerment; in this study, we aimed to cross-validate the survey-based women empowerment index in Afghanistan (SWEI-A) to be used for Pakistani women drawing upon the existent indicators that have been collected for women aged 15-49 years in the Pakistan DHS 2017-18.…”