Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy.
Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kansas City, MO, USA.
Matern Child Health J. 2021 Jan;25(1):95-106. doi: 10.1007/s10995-020-03025-y. Epub 2020 Nov 23.
Although many studies have examined the relationship between women's empowerment and a wide range of health outcomes, the extent to which the different dimensions of empowerment influence children's health, and through which mechanisms and in what contexts, is limited in sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this review is to systematically assess and examine studies that investigated the association between women's empowerment and children's health status in sub-Saharan Africa.
A systematic review of the published literature is searched through PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, Web of Science and Scopus databases focusing on different measures of women's empowerment and children's health outcomes. Inclusion criteria in the review are studies that are published in English; full and original articles; studies measuring at least one dimension of women's empowerment and children's health outcomes; and Sub-Saharan African context. Studies included in this review are articles published between the year 2000 and 2019. Studies were excluded if the source was a letter, editorial, review, commentary, abstracts without providing full information about the study.
Initially 4718 citations were identified. Finally, 15 studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In general, the evidence suggests that women's empowerment at the household level is positively and statistically significantly associated with better children's health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. The review also reveals that women's decision-making power or autonomy is the most common measure of women's empowerment employed by many studies.
Future related studies would benefit by incorporating additional aspects of women's empowerment and child health outcomes.
尽管许多研究已经考察了妇女赋权与广泛的健康结果之间的关系，但在撒哈拉以南非洲，赋权的不同维度对儿童健康的影响程度、通过哪些机制以及在何种情况下产生影响，这方面的研究还很有限。本综述的目的是系统地评估和考察调查妇女赋权与撒哈拉以南非洲儿童健康状况之间关联的研究。
通过 PubMed、Google Scholar、Embase、Web of Science 和 Scopus 数据库，以英文发表的、全文和原始文章、至少测量妇女赋权和儿童健康结果之一维度的、撒哈拉以南非洲背景的研究为纳入标准，对已发表的文献进行系统综述。本综述纳入的研究为 2000 年至 2019 年期间发表的文章。如果来源是信件、社论、评论、评论、摘要而没有提供关于该研究的全部信息，则排除在本综述之外。
最初确定了 4718 条引文。最后，有 15 项研究符合纳入和排除标准。总体而言，证据表明，撒哈拉以南非洲国家，家庭层面的妇女赋权与更好的儿童健康结果呈正相关且具有统计学意义。该综述还表明，妇女决策权或自主权是许多研究中使用的最常见的妇女赋权衡量标准。
未来的相关研究将受益于纳入妇女赋权和儿童健康结果的其他方面。
