IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pmed00/1003781.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data

Author

Listed:
  • Lilia Bliznashka
  • Ifeyinwa E Udo
  • Christopher R Sudfeld
  • Wafaie W Fawzi
  • Aisha K Yousafzai

Abstract

Background: Approximately 40% of children 3 to 4 years of age in low- and middle-income countries have suboptimal development and growth. Women’s empowerment may help provide inputs of nurturing care for early development and growth by building caregiver capacity and family support. We examined the associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, early learning, and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Methods and findings: We pooled data on married women (15 to 49 years) and their children (36 to 59 months) from Demographic and Health Surveys that collected data on child development (2011 to 2018) in 9 SSA countries (N = 21,434): Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda. We constructed a women’s empowerment score using factor analysis and assigned women to country-specific quintile categories. The child outcomes included cognitive, socioemotional, literacy–numeracy, and physical development (Early Childhood Development Index), linear growth (height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) and stunting (HAZ

Suggested Citation

  • Lilia Bliznashka & Ifeyinwa E Udo & Christopher R Sudfeld & Wafaie W Fawzi & Aisha K Yousafzai, 2021. "Associations between women’s empowerment and child development, growth, and nurturing care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: A cross-sectional analysis of demographic and health survey data," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(9), pages 1-30, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1003781
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003781
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003781
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003781&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003781?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Annick Makongote & Branly Mbunga & Pierre Akilimali & Sofia Castro Lopes & Dieudonné Mpunga, 2024. "Women’s Empowerment and Associated Factors in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo: A Secondary Data Analysis of the Performance Monitoring Assessment Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(7), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Galvin, Lauren & Verissimo, Cristiana K. & Ambikapathi, Ramya & Gunaratna, Nilupa S. & Rudnicka, Paula & Sunseri, Amy & Jeong, Joshua & O'Malley, Savannah Froese & Yousafzai, Aisha K. & Sando, Mary Mw, 2023. "Effects of engaging fathers and bundling nutrition and parenting interventions on household gender equality and women's empowerment in rural Tanzania: Results from EFFECTS, a five-arm cluster-randomiz," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    3. Mal, Piyasa & Saikia, Nandita, 2024. "Disparity by caste and tribe: Understanding women's empowerment and health outcomes in India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 354(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pmed00:1003781. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosmedicine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.