Intergenerational Comparison of Women Empowerment and its Determinants

Abstract

Background: Keeping in mind the importance of women empowerment for the growth of a country the present study aims to measure the empowerment of mothers’ generation and daughters’ generation and to estimate the chances of the transition of empowerment from mothers’ generation to daughters’ generation and the impact of demographic, social and economic indicators on the empowerment of mother’s generation and daughter’s generation.

Methodology: A questionnaire was used to collect data from Rawalpindi, Islamabad, and selected rural areas. The data from 510 women, including 198 mother-daughters pairs, was collected using a mixed sampling technique. Descriptive analyses, as well as logistic regressions, were employed to examine the determinants of women empowerment. Non-parametric tests were used to make inter as well as intragenerational comparisons among different dimensions of empowerment.

Results: The results of logistic regression revealed that women's empowerment is significantly affected by age, years of schooling, mother’s years of schooling, area of residence work experience, type of employer, and personal income. While examining the transition of empowerment from mothers to their daughters it was seen that highly empowered mothers have high chances of having empowered daughters.

Conclusion: Promoting the education of women, provision of loans, financial aid, and other facilities to women because all these help empower women, and since there is the transition of empowerment from mothers to their daughters, empowering a woman also means empowering her next generation.