Karina Antenucci
A recent report by the International Forum for Women’s Studies ranked Emory University as the most influential institution in women’s empowerment research. This recognition comes at a time when roughly one-third of the 47 core faculty members in the Hubert School of Global Health have contributed to women’s empowerment research in some way, noted Usha Ramakrishnan, PhD, dean of the school and Richard N. Hubert Professor Emeritus.
“The collective contributions of our faculty and students have increased Emory University’s global recognition as a leading institution in impactful research in the areas of women’s empowerment and global health,” said Dr. Katherine Youndt, Asa Griggs Chandler Dean of Global Health. “Emory now has a broad pipeline of researchers with expertise in this field who are highly sought after for collaborations and conducting important programmatic research.” Youndt was recognized in the aforementioned International Forum for Women’s Studies report as the most prolific author of papers in the field of women’s empowerment studies, ranking fourth in citations over her 20 years in the field.
So what exactly is women’s empowerment research? This research focuses on how women can increase their capabilities both individually and collectively. A crucial first step is ensuring women have access to supportive resources, including expanded social networks, economic resources, and human resources such as education.
“Guided by the work of Naira Kabir, these resources are thought to provide opportunities for women to develop agency,” Yount says. She explains that there are three types of agency: intrinsic agency is psychological, like knowing your rights and being confident in your capabilities; instrumental agency is the ability to have a voice, influence decisions, and act in ways that advance your aspirations; and collective agency is the process by which a group develops common goals and aspirations and acts together for social change.
“Not only is women’s empowerment an important end in itself, but investing in women is also good for society. There is plenty of evidence that empowering women benefits families, communities and society as a whole. It contributes to inclusive growth and the social and economic well-being of countries,” Yount says.
Research on women’s empowerment is also important for public health. Yount explains that Emory faculty and students have presented evidence suggesting that empowering women in their homes and communities leads to cascading benefits, including poverty alleviation, improved food security, improved child health and nutrition, and improved women’s own health and well-being, from dietary diversity to mental health.
“Women are the primary caregivers, so their ability to take advantage of public health interventions depends on women’s empowerment, autonomy, control and access to resources,” says Ramakrishnan, whose broad range of research focuses on maternal and child health.
“Emory has an interdisciplinary group of public health experts and social scientists working on this research, so we’re able to look at health outcomes in the field of global health,” Yount added.
One of many ongoing research projects at the Hubert School of Global Health is led by Dr. Sheila Sinharoy (Assistant Professor) and Dr. Bethany Caruso (Assistant Professor). The two faculty members co-lead the MUSE project, which also develops indicators to measure women’s empowerment in urban sanitation programs. To date, no validated survey tools existed to measure women’s empowerment in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects, so they developed and rigorously validated a survey module within urban sanitation programs in India and Uganda. They are currently collecting additional data to further validate the survey module in Bangladesh, India, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia.
“This initiative is important because the water and sanitation sector has historically been gender insensitive and is still well behind other sectors in terms of recognizing the importance of gender and empowerment. This initiative provides an opportunity to help the water and sanitation sector catch up,” says Sinharoy.
Another project she is currently working on with Jundt is the development of two new indicators to measure women’s collective agency and time-use agency. Time-use agency refers to a person’s critical awareness, confidence, and influence over their time allocation. Previous studies have measured how individuals spend their time, such as the time women spend on unpaid work or caregiving compared to men. However, these “time-use” indicators did not capture whether women feel they have the agency and ability to negotiate and make decisions about their own time, or whether they feel that differences in time allocation are unfair.
“The idea of control and agency over how we spend our time is something that resonates with almost everyone, but it’s never really been measured until now,” Sinharoy says.
Sinharoy, who completed both her doctorate and postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University, credits her work with Yundt and Yuk Fai Chung, PhD, associate professor in the Emory Department of Psychology, for establishing a new standard of rigor that has generally been lacking in women’s empowerment research.
“Specifically, this meant combining advanced statistical methods and theory from the social sciences for psychometric validation of the scale and applying it to public health research focused on women’s empowerment,” Sinharoy says. “This interdisciplinary approach has advanced the entire field, and I have been fortunate to be part of that advancement and to have benefited from being trained in these methods by Dr. Yunt and Dr. Chung.”
Ramakrishnan points out the importance of collaboration between social scientists and public health experts in research on women’s empowerment: “While public health faces the on-the-ground problems of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and mental health, social scientists have the expertise to develop tools to measure these complexities,” she says.
In 2021, the Hubert School of Global Health added a new doctoral program in Global Health and Development with the goal of preparing leaders and scholars who use science to improve public health policy and practice for disadvantaged populations around the world. Graduates will gain a solid understanding of the theoretical frameworks of implementation science and related methodological skills needed to guide programs and policies designed to improve health outcomes in diverse settings around the world.
“Emory University is training the next generation of researchers who will contribute to advanced technical and policy discussions on women’s empowerment as a social determinant of global health,” Yount says.
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