Measurement and Determinants of Rural Women’s Empowerment in Pakistan

Empowering rural women is key to sustainable development. Despite substantial research, the existing indices are incomplete and context-specific to measure women’s empowerment. This study aims to develop a comprehensive rural women’s composite empowerment index (RWCEI) and determine individual, household, and community-level factors of RWCEI by using data from 1881 women from the 2013–2014 Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey. Factor analysis was used to develop RWCEI from nine domains, fourteen sub-domains, and eighty-nine indicators. In the sample, rural women were empowered in free mobility, no domestic violence, and time allocation, while disempowered in education, awareness, and economic domains. Results of multi-level mixed effects ordered logistic regression revealed that the highly empowered status of a rural woman was mainly determined by access to credit, marital status, exposure to mass media, employment, and educated community. Empirical findings suggest a multi-dimensional policy approach focusing on improving all dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially economic independence, and educational attainment.