Women’s Age at First Marriage and Long-Term Economic Empowerment in Egypt

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 calls on nations to promote gender equality and to empower women and girls. SDG5 also recognizes the value of women's economic empowerment, entailing equal rights to economic resources and full participation at all levels in economic decisions. Also according to SDG5, eliminating harmful practices-such as child marriage before age 18-is a prerequisite for women's economic empowerment. Using national data for 4,129 married women 15-43 years who took part in the (ELMPS 1998-2012), we performed autoregressive, cross-lagged panel analyses to assess whether women's first marriage in adulthood (at 18 years or older, as reported in 2006), was positively associated with their long-term post-marital economic empowerment, measured as their engagement in market work and latent family economic agency in 2012. Women's first marriage in adulthood had positive unadjusted associations with their market work and family economic agency in 2012. These associations persisted after accounting for market work and family economic agency in 2006, pre-marital resources for empowerment, and cumulative fertility. Policies to discourage child marriage may show promise to enhance women's long-term post-marital economic empowerment.

Measurement properties of the Project-Level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

“…As such, new claims on resources may enhance agency, which in turn, may help foster new claims on other resources-individually and collectively. Thus, our framework ( Figure 1), and prior research (Yount, Crandall, & Cheong, 2018), recognize the reciprocal influences of dimensions of women's empowerment over time.…”

Community gender systems and a daughter’s risk of female genital mutilation/cutting: Multilevel findings from Egypt

“…In lower-and middle-income settings, evidence of structural gender equities at the village or neighborhood level may include higher average schooling attainments, later average ages at first marriage, lower rates of arranged marriage, and higher rates of participation in market work. The availability of these opportunities in a mother's local community (village or neighborhood) may allow her to see real alternatives for social acceptance instead of having her daughters cut [35,44,68]. Thus, a direct association may exist between (proximate) community opportunities for women outside the family and a daughter's risk of FGMC.…”

“…We also considered aggregate scores for women's freedom of movement and influence in household decisions; however, questions on freedom of movement were not asked in the EDHS 2014, and measures for freedom of movement and decision-making capture women's agency in the marital family [64], not opportunities outside the family, a core element of our theory. Also, in Egypt, women's age at first marriage, schooling attainment, and market work are determinants of their agency in the marital family [68]. We performed EFA and then CFA in random split-half samples.…”

Age at marriage, social norms, and female education in Nepal

“…1 See Wahhaj (2018) and Yount, Crandall, and Cheong (2018) for extensive literature reviews on this link. In particular, Wahhaj (2018) carries out a wide-ranging review of both economic and sociological explanations for early marriage and gender gaps in marriage age.…”