Socio-economic and Socio-demographic Determinants of Women Empowerment: Empirical Evidence From the Districts of Ghizer and Gilgit, Northern Pakistan

Women empowerment has remained the most deliberate subject and many social scientists have explored this subject in their respective fields. Women empowerment has assorted dimensions, however this study focuses only on two dimensions’ women decision making and women participation. Primarily, this study constructs two indices of women empowerment which are women decision making index and women participation index based on different components computed using principal component analysis. This research uses primary data, where the data is collected from households of the respective regions using two-stage cluster sampling technique. Secondly, this paper scrutinizes the socio-demographic and economic causes of women empowerment in Gilgit and Ghizer districts of Gilgit-Baltistan using structural equation model. The scores of women empowerment indexes indicate that in terms of decision making, women of Ghizer district are more empowered as compared to Gilgit district whereas in terms of women participation women of Gilgit are more empowered. Amongst the socio-economic and demographic variables, education level shows significant and positive association with both indexes of empowerment. Correspondingly, standard of living of the household demonstrates a significant relationship with women decision making showing that the better the standard of living the more empowered will be the women. Moreover, household size shows a positive and significant relationship with women participation, having more people at home can augment the empowerment of women in terms of participation whereas asset index shows a negative association with women participation.