Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, University of Bergen (UiB), Bergen, Norway.
Section Global Health and Rehabilitation, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway.
BMC Womens Health. 2022 Nov 16;22(1):453. doi: 10.1186/s12905-022-02031-2.
Despite the obvious violation of women's rights in Pakistan and the vital necessity for women empowerment, a unified country-specific index measuring women empowerment is not yet available. This study cross-validated a survey-based women empowerment index from Afghanistan to be used in Pakistan.
The data for married Pakistani women aged 15-49 in the 2017-18 Pakistan demographic health survey was used to construct the final model using the explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses. The Cronbach's alpha test examined the internal consistency of the developed index. To assess the convergence validity of the index, the association of each emerged domain with indicators of access to reproductive and maternity care was assessed by Poisson regression analysis adjusting for wealth index.
The final index had six domains; namely, labor force participation, attitude toward violence, decision-making, access to healthcare, literacy, age at critical life events predicting women empowerment of married Pakistani women with decent reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.70), and validity (SRSEA&SRMR < 0.05, CFI&TLI > 0.92). The emerged domains were significantly associated with at least one of four indicators for access to reproductive and maternity care; indicative of a favorable convergence validity.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are associated as brother countries with shared religious and ethnocultural identities in which women are perceived inferior to men and in critical need of empowering efforts. The results of this study reflect upon this resemblance in sociocultural structure by yielding similar domains for women's empowerment in Pakistan building upon an index previously developed for Afghan women. The developed index could inform the design of future policies, interventions, and research recognizing the important indicators of women empowerment in Pakistan and could enhance the comparability of the results across future studies.
尽管巴基斯坦明显存在侵犯妇女权利的行为，妇女赋权也至关重要，但目前还没有一个统一的、针对巴基斯坦的衡量妇女赋权的国家特定指数。本研究交叉验证了一项基于阿富汗的妇女赋权调查指数，以将其应用于巴基斯坦。
使用 2017-18 年巴基斯坦人口健康调查中 15-49 岁已婚巴基斯坦妇女的数据，通过解释性和验证性因子分析构建最终模型。Cronbach's alpha 检验用于评估所开发指数的内部一致性。为评估指数的收敛有效性，通过泊松回归分析评估每个新出现领域与获得生殖和产妇保健指标的关联，调整财富指数。
最终指数有六个领域；即劳动力参与度、对暴力的态度、决策能力、获得医疗保健的机会、读写能力、预测已婚巴基斯坦妇女赋权的关键生活事件年龄，具有相当可靠的可靠性（Cronbach's α=0.70）和有效性（SRSEA 和 SRMR <0.05，CFI 和 TLI >0.92）。新出现的领域与至少四个获得生殖和产妇保健指标中的一个显著相关，表明有良好的收敛有效性。
巴基斯坦和阿富汗是兄弟国家，有着共同的宗教和民族文化认同，在这些国家，妇女被认为低于男性，迫切需要赋权。本研究的结果反映了这种社会文化结构的相似性，通过在以前为阿富汗妇女开发的指数的基础上，为巴基斯坦妇女赋权产生了类似的领域。所开发的指数可以为未来的政策、干预措施和研究提供信息，认识到巴基斯坦妇女赋权的重要指标，并增强未来研究结果的可比性。
