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Attaining equality between women and men and eliminating all forms of discrimination are fundamental human rights and United Nations values. Nevertheless, women globally suffer violations of their human rights throughout their lives. This necessitates investigation of the attitude that people hold towards women empowerment, which is defined as their ability to practice their rights, freedom and attain resources within a framework of gender inequality. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure attitudes regarding women’s empowerment, which can develop better understanding and future interventions to counter these negative attitudes for better social and health care, including mental and physical health.

The factorial structure, reliability, content validity and impact of gender on factor structure of scale were examined among university students (N = 500) in study with male (n = 180) and female (n = 320) population.

Exploratory factor analysis using direct oblimin method based on principal component analysis indicated a three-factor, 16-item scale including subscales of personal freedom; equal rights and women empowerment-related fears. Instrument exhibited decent reliability (0.80) and content validity in both male and female university students with a t = −7.64, p = 0.00, suggesting a highly significant difference between the two genders on the developed scale.

The major limitation was that the sample was obtained from student population; therefore, it will not be entirely correct to generalize it to the whole population of Pakistan. Similarly, there are issues regarding the availability of students because of a busy schedule or not having interest to take part in the study that led to variance in the sample. Lastly, the current scale is developed based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and it should be further enhanced using item response theory in future. Future studies need to include samples from different populations in Pakistan to bring out a more generalized view and try to minimize the variances in sample as much as possible for better results.

The scale is constructed using the basic features of women empowerment at its core and is applicable in various settings to measure the attitude towards women empowerment. It will be a helpful tool to be used in various health, employment and educational settings. Moreover, this instrument can be applied for research purpose of measuring attitude as a predictor in combination with other variables such as domestic violence and harassment.

Empowering of women is one of the main agendas of 2019 of United Nations for Asian countries where women are not given equal rights, because of which suffer socially and economically from various problems along with issues regarding physical and mental health. By identifying the attitudes of general population, their causes for their attitudes can help in betterment of the women empowerment process.

This paper in discussion is an original work and has been performed with the purpose of assessing attitudes of males and females regarding women empowerment as the previous measures are either not psychometric valid or are in interview or survey form. The current developed scale is an attempt to develop an instrument that can be globally used.

The purpose of the paper is to address the sustainability issue of Self-help groups by means of developing small business/micro-entrepreneurs.

The causal relationship between empowerment through SHG and micro-entrepreneurship is being investigated by estimating empirical data through structural equation modelling with second-order latent factor.

Empirical examination supports the causal relationship between empowerment through SHG and small business.

The study is conforming the policy of group forming and, at this stage, develops a conceptual framework but with real implications for comprehensive policy decisions.

There are many studies on the women empowerment aspect of SHGs. However, few attempted to find out how the micro-entrepreneurs emerging from SHGs.

Drawing on stakeholder theory, the purpose of this paper examines how Nigerian banks employ their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to empower women to participate in economic and commercial activities.

The methodology of this paper is regarding a thematic analysis of Nigerian banks' annual CSR and sustainability reports.

A theoretical framework was developed which illustrates the investment foundation (Sustainable Development Goals, Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principles) that supports the different levels of engagement (healthcare, financial, social and career empowerment) aimed at different groups of women (women at large, women in business and women in career) in the society.

The study findings are confined to the banks in Nigeria, focussing on how they empower women to participate in economic and commercial activities.

It is paramount that Nigerian banks consistently report their CSR initiatives. When designing these initiatives, it is equally important to incorporate WEPs, as they are specifically focussed on women.

Due to their low-level institutional and financial development, it is important that Nigerian banks design their CSR initiatives to improve women empowerment. While initiatives should be targeted at women's well-being and physical health, it is important to steer women towards financial and social independence through loans, grants and mentorship.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no other research study has examined how banks in an emerging market use their CSR activities to empower women to participate in financial activities.

The purpose of the paper is to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and systematic review to examine the research landscape of women empowerment through participation in self-help groups (SHGs), identifying the eminent contributors, intellectual communities and future research agenda in the field of SHGs and women empowerment.

The global works of literature related to the theme of SHGs and women empowerment between 1998 and May 6, 2022 were scanned for bibliometric analysis and systematic review. A total of 176 English language documents from the Scopus database were extracted. Bibliometric analysis is conducted using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software.

This study finds that SHGs are paramount in achieving rural women’s empowerment multidimensionally. Found that India is the most contributing country with 136 documents, and Ranjula Bali Swain and Fan Yang Wallentin are the most cited authors in the research field of SHGs and women empowerment. In addition, the paper proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework to portray rudimentary antecedents of women’s empowerment achieved through participation in SHGs.

This bibliometric analysis, along with a systematic review demonstrating a framework encapsulating the principal dimensions of women empowerment and their indicators, will be helpful to practitioners, government, policymakers and researchers working in the area of SHGs and women empowerment.

This study recognizes numerous significant contributions by eminent scholars and presents a concise review of the literature for novice researchers working in the area of SHGs and women empowerment.

Women empowerment becomes an important policy discussion in development economics and modernization theory. The empowerment of women can lead to an increase in the quality viz-a-viz the capacity of human resources accessible for economic development. The purpose of this study is to evidence the impact of social and economic dimensions on women empowerment through financial inclusion in rural India.

To reveal the research objective, the study has utilized a primary survey of women respondents from the Gujarat state of India by a simple random sampling method and applied a logistic regression approach to identify the relationship between the need of a bank account (determinant of financial inclusion) as a dependent variable and social and economic dimensions of women empowerment such as earning status, participation in financial decision-making, recipient of social welfare schemes and perception towards the safety of saving as independent variables.

The results of this study show that earning status, participation in financial decision-making at household level and recipient of social welfare schemes by women have a significant impact on women empowerment through financial inclusion; however, safety of their savings is observed as an insignificant variable, yet the odd value is very high (2.437) in the present study.

The present study is the first of its kind to examine the social and economic status of women and its impact on their requirement of a formal bank account for the overall empowerment of women in rural India.

This study aims to explore economic, social, psychological and political empowerment and dis-empowerment of women caused by microfiance interventions. Women tend to face the brunt of societal discrimination created by economic, social, psychological and political disempowerment. This led to the emergence of the microfinance model for the rural poor and specifically focused on women as an agency for social change.

This study is based on a systemic literature review to examine microfinance-led women empowerment to reduce the ambiguity in theoretical and empirical underpinning.

The study’s findings suggest that even though microfinance as a developmental model is not a runaway success, it did make some positive impact on the status of women.

This study shows that the microfinance program empowers women and reduces societal inequalities to some extent, but literature also suggests that microfinance as a model has failed to make the requisite socio-economic change, and in some cases, there is adverse impact.

This study aims to assess the impact of intervention programs on women empowerment in northern Ghana and the role of skills training and financial independence on women empowerment.

A structured questionnaire, observations and informal interviews were used to gather data using the survey method. The sample consists of 321 girls from the non-formal track STAGE project in the Kasena Nankana West District of the Upper East Region. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model.

The results show that NGO intervention programs have a significant impact on women’s empowerment, skills acquisition mediates the relationship between NGO intervention programs and women empowerment. Financial independence does not mediate relationships but significantly affects women’s empowerment.

The discussion on women’s empowerment is not without mentioning the support of NGOs intervention programs. However, there is inadequate literature to explore the basic impacts of sponsored intervention programs on women’s empowerment in Ghana. The findings will provide directions for NGOs intervention programs to support women empowerment in Ghana.

This article analyses the effect of bank concentration on women's political empowerment in 80 developing countries over the period 2004–2020.

Banking concentration (BC) is measured by the assets held by the three largest commercial banks as a percentage of total commercial bank assets in a country. We use several indices to measure political empowerment, namely: the political empowerment index, composed of three indices (i.e. the women's civil liberties index, the women's participation in civil society index and the women's political participation index). The empirical evidence is based on the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effects (FE) techniques.

The following findings are established. Banking concentration reduces women's political empowerment. Furthermore, information sharing offices (i.e. public credit registries and private credit bureaus) mitigate the negative effect of bank concentration on women’s political empowerment. Information sharing thresholds that are needed to completely dampen the negative effect of bank concentration on women’s political empowerment are provided. Policy implications are discussed, notably: (1) that governments in developing countries increase competition by easing barriers to entry for potential banks, to facilitate the transition from confiscatory concentration to distributive concentration favorable to all stakeholders; and (2) information sharing offices should be consolidated beyond the established thresholds in order to completely crowd-out the unfavorable effect of bank concentration of women’s political empowerment.

The paper provides new empirical evidence that helps to advance the debate on the effects of banking concentration and information sharing in the banking sector on women's political empowerment in developing countries.

There has been a substantial increase in the implementation of programmes that aim to enhance the livelihoods of rural people by organizing them into groups, emphasizing women towards achieving women empowerment, which is one of the key goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study aims to assess the impact of participation in self-help groups (SHGs) under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) on the political empowerment of rural tribal women in India.

This study is based on primary data collected using a multistage random sampling method. Field research is conducted in the state of Jharkhand, primarily focusing on women belonging to the scheduled tribe category. The propensity score matching technique derives the results using the psmatch2 command in STATA.

The results show a significant positive change in women's access to voting rights, awareness of various government schemes and entitlements, political awareness and participation, campaigning during elections and leadership positions after participation in SHGs under NRLM.

The existing literature indicates that research on the empowerment of tribal women through participation in SHGs is scant. This study makes a novel contribution by examining the effectiveness of participation in SHGs under NRLM on the political empowerment of tribal women in rural India. This study will provide significant insights to the government, policymakers, practitioners and researchers working on SHGs and tribal women’s empowerment.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2023-0489

The social inclusion of immigrants has been a central public policy issue in European countries, and entrepreneurship is often promoted as a form of integration. Female immigrants face double discrimination of gender and ethnicity while becoming entrepreneurs. The aim of the paper is to investigate the female empowerment in the host country as a predictor of immigrant women engagement in entrepreneurship.

Based on panel data for European Union countries for years 2006–2021, female immigrant entrepreneurship was modelled by the impact of variables showing the empowerment of women in host countries. Data availability was the determinant regarding the inclusion of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden were all in the research sample.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship is highly context-oriented and locale-specific (as in the physical setting for relationships among people), some universal patterns for a group of countries are found. A stronger political and managerial position of power for the women in host countries encourages female immigrant entrepreneurship, while the gender pay gap is statistically insignificant.

The originality of the paper is due to the multi-country level and female-focused research perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship. The study refers to the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, arguing that the empowerment of women in host countries affects female immigrant entrepreneurship at the macro-level.