Heterogeneity in women’s public and private agency across sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUNDThe fifth United Nations sustainable development goal calls for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.However, progress toward this goal remains difficult to assess, as empowerment is multidimensional, context-specific, and challenging to quantify. OBJECTIVEThis study develops a framework to examine how women's empowerment manifests across intersecting domains and sociocultural contexts in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). METHODSUsing the Demographic and Health Survey, with data from 303,717 women in 34 SSA countries, we employ latent class analysis to identify distinct empowerment typologies by leveraging 23 survey indicators of agency across multiple dimensions and contexts.We then evaluate how well a smaller set of commonly applied survey items and countrylevel indicators of empowerment accurately predict the identified typologies. RESULTSWomen who report taking part in household decisions also report a lower acceptance of intimate partner violence, but rejecting such violence does not always align with decisionmaking power.Education and employment are not consistently associated with greater domestic agency, and many women face healthcare barriers regardless of socioeconomic status.Commonly applied survey items of empowerment are able to predict only women in the less empowered typologies. CONCLUSIONSThese findings highlight the complex expression of women's empowerment and illustrate