Uneven progress: trends and social inequalities in women’s empowerment domains in Ghana from 2003–2022

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Introduction: Despite notable policy efforts, evidence on long-term trends and social inequalities in women's empowerment in Ghana remains limited. This study examined changes from 2003 to 2022 across three SWPER-derived domains including social independence, decision-making, and attitudes toward violence, focusing on regional, socioeconomic, age, education, and urban-rural disparities. Methods: Data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey waves (2003-2022) was used to estimate the prevalence of high empowerment among currently married women aged 15-49 years. Inequalities were assessed using Difference (D), Ratio (R), Population Attributable Fraction (PAF), Population Attributable Risk (PAR), Absolute Concentration Index (ACI), and Theil Index (TI), with trends disaggregated by region, wealth, education, age, and residence. Results: Empowerment prevalence increased across all domains, but trajectories diverged. Attitudes toward violence improved substantially (61.6% to 79.2% between 2008 and 2022), accompanied by narrowing regional and wealth inequalities. Decision-making rose to 61.4% in 2014 before declining to 55.6% in 2022, with widening age and wealth disparities thereafter. Social independence increased from 29.5 to 45.5% but remained the most unequal domain: a 45-percentage-point gap persisted between Greater Accra (67.2%) and North-East (22.4%), while adolescent coverage stagnated below 5%. Education was the dominant driver of inequality in social independence (PAF > 115%; PAR ≈ 53 percentage points). Although TI declined across domains, rising ACI for education indicated increasingly concentrated gains among educated women. Conclusion: While Ghana has achieved normative progress and reduced geographic disparities, substantial socioeconomic and age-related inequalities persist, particularly in social independence, necessitating equity-focused, domain-specific policy responses beyond national averages.

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