Empowerment of Women Research Program

Location: International
Current Funders: Ford Foundation, National Institutes of Health    
Duration: 2003 to 2005

The Empowerment of Women Research Program, founded in 1990, conducts studies to better understand the relationships between gender and reproductive health and to analyze development and population policies from the perspectives of the people they are intended to serve. The studies also explore how different program styles and strategies contribute to women’s empowerment, or create barriers by reinforcing gender inequity or other social inequalities. By generating high quality, in-depth data on the role social policies and programs play in shifting the relative position of women, the Empowerment of Women Research Program helps to place women and their interests at the center of development debates.

Our current and recent work addresses issues of child marriage, childbearing among adolescents, violence against women, and the effects of women’s empowerment across generations. For example, with support from the David and Lucile Packard and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundations, the program collaborated with the Bangladesh Women’s Health Coalition in a qualitative study investigating the socio-cultural supports for early marriage and childbearing. The project generated evidence that change towards later marriage and childbearing is beginning in rural Bangladesh, analyzed the social dynamics behind these change processes and described the reasons that the most economically deprived rural families tend to lag behind.

A new NIH-funded study in Bangladesh will examine the socio-cultural processes through which women’s empowerment affects the health of subsequent generations of women (as well as the processes through which the cross-generational influence may be thwarted.) In-depth, ethnographic interviews will be conducted with two types of triads of women: 1) young women who married outside of the primary study sites, a population normally lost to community studies; and their mothers and mothers-in-law; 2) young brides who married into the primary study sites, their mothers-in-law and their mothers (who will be traced and interviewed in their own villages of residence). The study will examine the influence of women's empowerment on two closely-related outcomes influencing women’s health and well-being: age at marriage and age at initiation of childbearing. Early marriage and childbearing among girls is associated with a wide range of negative social and health consequences for young mothers and their infants, and contributes to rapid population growth. The research site, Bangladesh, is second only to Niger as having the highest percentage of adolescent brides in the world, with 68% of girls being married by age 18, according to national survey data from 2004.

The Empowerment of Women Research Program is working with the Consultation of Investment of Health Promotion in Vietnam, with support from the Ford Foundation, in the development and testing of strategies to discourage gender-based violence and support victims. The project has mobilized a range of Vietnamese institutions, including health providers and mass organizations, who are intervening both through screening and counseling in health centers and by building anti-violence networks in local communities. 

Contact: Sidney Schuler