Relationship between women’s socioeconomic status and empowerment in Burkina Faso: A focus on participation in decision-making and experience of domestic violence

Since 2009, the Burkina Faso government has launched a national policy to empower women and to better integrate gender equity in policies, actions, and programs. This paper explores how socioeconomic characteristics shape two aspects of women’s empowerment: decision-making in the household and experience of domestic violence. Using binary logistic regression, data for 9,141 cohabiting or married women from the 2010 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) are analyzed. Decision-making is positively associated with working for cash, education and higher household wealth. Women’s experience domestic violence is weakly related to socioeconomic characteristics. Only psychological pressure is related to education and household wealth. The study show that high levels of human capital and financial autonomy influence women's participation in decision-making. The subtlety of the relationship between women’s empowerment and domestic violence is also shown. In acceptance of traditional gender roles, neither education nor financial autonomy is sufficient to assert women’s empowerment.