Empowering Women Saves Children's Lives: A Comparative Analysis

Sangeeta Parashar, University of Maryland

What are some alternative dimensions of women's empowerment and how are they linked to child health and survival? Using Demographic and Health Surveys from various countries, I examine how mother's empowerment relates to child nutrition and immunization. Multivariate analyses highlight the need to conceptualize empowerment as multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. Furthermore, the dimensions most important for ensuring child nutrition are not the same as those important for ensuring infant immunizations, suggesting that women need to be empowered simultaneously along several different dimensions if children are to benefit across the whole spectrum of their health and survival needs.