By: Anita Raj and Susan C. Scrimshaw

While the concepts of women’s empowerment, population dynamics, and socioeconomic development have been studied extensively from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, a holistic interdisciplinary review that reconciles the literature on these complex dynamics is absent. The lack of consensus limits the extent to which these concepts can be applied toward accomplishing global health and development goals. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to appoint a multidisciplinary consensus study committee focused on advancing the state of knowledge on the impact of women’s empowerment and associated population dynamics on socioeconomic development. The committee was tasked with developing a conceptual framework describing these dynamics and setting an agenda for future research and data collection.

To address the charge, the committee reviewed research from a wide variety of social science and health disciplines. While it became clear that existing empowerment frameworks do not fully address the interactions across women’s empowerment, population dynamics, and socioeconomic development, these frameworks enabled the committee to identify critical gaps and highlight women’s agency as a lynchpin in the empowerment process.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024.