phd thesis on women's economic empowerment

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• Published: 21 May 2024

Effect of the contextual (community) level social trust on women’s empowerment: an instrumental variable analysis of 26 nations

• Alena Auchynnikava 1 ,
• Nazim Habibov   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3862-4348 1 ,
• Yunhong Lyu 2 &
• Lida Fan 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  648 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Social policy

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of contextual (community) level social trust on women’s empowerment. The specific knowledge gap explored in this study is that the previous studies theorized that community trust has a positive impact on women’s empowerment. Thus, an increase in trust in the community will empower women. However, such an assumption has been never empirically tested and confirmed. Against this backdrop, the present paper develops a theoretical argument on why the increase in community trust should lead to a higher level of women empowerment. Then, a cross-country survey was used as a data source to test the effect of community trust on women’s empowerment. A traditional single-stage OLS and instrumental variable regressions are estimated to test the effect of community trust on women’s empowerment and quantify the magnitude of such impact. The key finding of this paper is that community trust indeed significantly strengthens the empowerment of women by increasing women’s ownership of assets and improving the decision-making authority of women in the family. Importantly, our findings are robust for the separate rural and urban samples, as well as the samples of younger and older women. Equally, our findings are robust for an alternative set of instruments. The main implication of these findings is that policymakers, social administrators, and government authorities who are working on promoting gender equality should give priority to promoting community-based interventions that nurture and maintain women’s trust.

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Introduction.

Women’s empowerment is a strong precursor to economic development and poverty reduction across nations and over time (Doepke and Tertilt, 2019 ; UN, 2016 ; Wei et al., 2021 ). Thus, women’s decision-making power within families is associated with higher work productivity (Diiro et al., 2018 ), the rise in the share of the family budget spent on food and pro-children’s expenditures (Bobonis, 2009 ; Doss, 2013 ), increases in calorie availability and dietary diversity for families (Sraboni et al., 2014 ), and improvement in child nutrition, anthropometric, and health outcomes (Duflo, 2003 ; Malapit et al., 2015 ). It is also associated with a higher level of labor force participation (Majlesi, 2016 ) and a higher propensity for the use of prenatal, natal, and post-natal healthcare services (Auchynnikava and Habibov, 2021 ). Similarly, possession of assets such as land, bank accounts, and dwellings by women leads to a higher proportion of the family budget being spent on education (Quisumbing and Maluccio, 2003 ) and nutrition (Doss, 2013 ). The ownership of assets by women also increases the likelihood of prenatal healthcare utilization (Beegle et al., 2001 ) and reduces the probability of intimate partner violence (Pereira et al., 2017 ).

Examining the origins of women’s empowerment has become one of the important research objectives in women’s studies, economics, political science, and sociology (Doepke and Tertilt, 2019 ). Empowerment can arise through several different pathways, of which one is social capital (Machio et al. 2022 ). Social capital can be defined as trust within a network of individuals, their participation in local organizations, and reciprocity norms that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit (Bourdieu, 1985 ; Putnam, 2000 ). A handful of studies have examined the association of social capital with the empowerment of women. Investigating a macro-finance program in Cameroon, Mayoux ( 2001 ) found that the social capital that was generated by the program considerably strengthened women’s empowerment. Social networks can support the dissemination of knowledge, which women can then use to their advantage (Hanmer and Klugman, 2016 ). If such networks teach members how to be assertive, joining networks can boost a woman’s ability to make decisions at home. Participation in self-help groups was found to be positively correlated with empowerment in Ethiopia (Alemu et al., 2018 ), Kenya (Po and Hickey, 2020 ), and India (Nayak and Panigrahi, 2020 ). The most recent study on Kenya by Machio et al. ( 2022 ) reported that active participation in local groups and maintaining a network of people to rely on lead to higher levels of women’s empowerment.

Against this backdrop, the current study contributes to the extant literature from both theoretical and methodological perspectives. From a theoretical perspective, one of our contributions is that we focus on contextualized community-level social trust, whereas previous studies have concentrated on individual-level social trust only. Another theoretical contribution is that the literature on women’s empowerment has focused exclusively on the network component of social capital, while the current study examines social trust.

From the research perspective, our contribution is that, as far as we know, it is the first study to use the instrumental variable regression method (IV) to quantify the effect of social trust on women’s empowerment. The majority of earlier research has cross-sectional designs, which renders the results susceptible to the problems of reverse causality, unobserved factors, and measurement error.

Finally, in our focus on the region of the post-communist countries, we are guided by theoretical, practical, and research considerations. From the policy standpoint, the focus on the post-communist countries can be explained by the fact that women’s empowerment has been considerably weakened in post-communist countries since the commencement of transitional from communist command-administrative socio-economic system to a more open market-oriented one, while the literature on the determinants of women empowerment in these countries is limited (Auchynnikava and Habibov, 2021 ; Barrett et al., 2012 ; Habibov et al., 2017 ). From the practical perspective, by focusing on the post-communist countries, we can utilize a unique large multinational survey in a diverse set of countries. In comparison, previous studies have concentrated on a single country as a case study, such as Ethiopia (Alemu et al., 2018 ), Kenya (Po and Hickey, 2020 ), and India (Nayak et al. 2020 ) reducing the generalizability of their findings. It is especially important since interpretations of social capital and women’s empowerment measures vary significantly across cultures, traditions, and societies, thus also affecting the universality of the previous findings (van Hoorn ( 2015 ); Hanmer and Klugman, 2016 ). Lastly, from the research standpoint, using such a unique data set on post-communist countries allows us to analyze information on the link between various dimensions of women’s empowerment and social trust, while previous studies almost exclusively focused only on social networks. Hence, the current study enriches the research literature on the link between women’s empowerment and different dimensions of social capital, especially those at the community level.

With this information in mind, let us move to the Theoretical Foundation section below.

Theoretical foundation

The outcome of interest: women’s empowerment.

Women’s empowerment refers to their liberation from discriminatory practices and gender-based prejudices in the economic, cultural, social, and political spheres (Adhikari et al. 2023 ). It encompasses giving women the autonomy to follow the paths they want to take in life and ensure the freedom to openly express their ideas, develop their self-esteem, and bargain for what they want by granting them greater autonomy and responsibility to make decisions that affect their own lives and providing them with pertinent resources, assets, and skills (Sharma, 2020 ). As outlined above, uncovering and evaluating the roots of women’s empowerment has emerged as one of the key research goals in economics, development studies, women’s studies, social policy, and sociology (Doepke and Tertilt, 2019 ).

Women’s asset ownership and women’s autonomy in decision-making

In the spirit of Kishor ( 2000 ), this study uses women’s assets and women’s autonomy in decision-making as the main indicators of women’s empowerment. Exploring the usefulness of various possible indicators of women’s empowerment, Kishor critiqued studies that merely link women’s empowerment with the achievement of demographic goals, like higher employment and education rates for failing to assess whether these goals have resulted in a rise in women’s control over their own live and environment (p. 124). For Kishor, such demographic goals are means of achieving the outcome of empowerment but not the ultimate outcomes of empowerment. Instead, Kishor advanced the notion of empowerment as an outcome. Thus, Kishor suggests that effective indicators of women’s empowerment should incorporate: (1) indicators that reveal evidence of achieving empowerment, for example, the extent of control women over household decisions, and (2) indicators that reveal of sources empowerment, for example, ownership of assets.

Similarly, Kabeer ( 1999 , p.366) distinguished between resource and agency. Resources are the characteristics that facilitate women’s empowerment. They include assets and access to resources. In comparison, the agency referred to autonomy and control over key decisions. Therefore, regardless of the exact terminology used, there seems to be agreement in the literature that empowerment is a multifaceted construct encompassing the resources women need and the power to make choices.

Predictor of interest: contextualized community-level social trust

The current study focuses on contextualized community-level social trust as the predictor of women’s empowerment. In comparison, previous studies have concentrated on individual-level social trust only as they followed the tradition of conceptualizing social capital as the resources embedded within an individual’s durable social network, and therefore the analysis was conducted at the individual level (Bourdieu, 1985 ; Lin, 1999 ; Arezzo and Giudici, 2017 ). However, the novelty of the concept of social capital lies in its collective, contextualized, area-level leverage (Kim et al., 2011 ; De Clercq et al. 2012 ; Habibov and Cheung, 2018 ). This line of conceptualization originates from the work of Putnam ( 2000 ), who demonstrated that social capital plays a role in the public good at both the community and area levels. For Putnam, social capital is an ecological characteristic and a collective resource that could be properly assessed at contextualized levels such as regions, areas, communities, or neighborhoods (Berkman and Kawachi, 2000 ). Mutual trust, strong social connections, and high rates of engagement in community affairs in selected regions of Italy were found to be the driving forces that created positive spillovers with potential benefits for all the citizens of the regions (Putnam et al., 1993 ). As such, this study follows Putnam’s tradition in conceptualizing social capital as a contextualized community resource, and it also fills the gap in the existing literature by testing its relationship with women’s empowerment.

At the same time, it should be highlighted that the current study examines social trust, while the previous literature on women’s empowerment has focused exclusively on the network component of social capital. Following Coleman’s ( 1988 ) tradition, social trust is considered to be a key cognitive dimension of social capital, which bolsters mutually reciprocal relationships within a network (Adjaye-Gbewonyo et al., 2018 ). The traditional survey question about social trust, articulated as “generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people”, has been used in the literature to capture the variation in social trust (Zhang, 2020 ).

At the individual level, social trust can be thought of either as particularized or generalized trust (Newton and Zmerli, 2011 ). Particularized trust is trust towards individuals we know, for instance, family members, relatives, co-workers, and neighbors. In contrast, generalized trust is trust towards unknown strangers. Particular and generalized types of trust at the individual level correspond with notions of bonding and bridging social capital (Giordano et al., 2012 ). Particularized trust is a type of bonding social capital that denotes trust between people who are similar in some aspects, for instance, place of residence or place of job. Conversely, generalized trust is a type of bridging social capital that links people from different places of residence and jobs. However, when averaged at the community level, social trust incorporates features of both types of trust (Zhang, 2020 ). Community-level social trust brings together particularized (i.e., bonding) and generalized (i.e., bridging) trust since it encompasses trust in unknown persons but among those individuals who reside in the same community (Glanville and Story, 2018 ; Wollebaek et al., 2012 ).

Link between contextualized community-level social trust and women’s empowerment

Evidence suggests that social trust at the community level may create an environment that facilitates women’s empowerment. It lowers the cost of social and commercial transactions by reducing the need for formal agreements, legal and regulatory frameworks, and costly enforcement (Sturgis et al., 2015 ). In this way, it helps increase employment and private entrepreneurship by enabling people to engage in secure and predictable ways (Bjørnskov, 2008 ; Kwon et al., 2013 ). As a result, a higher level of community-level trust is found to increase the probability of finding new employment, increasing hours of work at current jobs, and starting a new business (Habibov and Afandi, 2017 ). A higher level of trust is also a prerequisite for a more effective bureaucracy, a more just judicial system, and a higher level of reliability of market transactions that provide stronger protection for assets and property rights (Collier, 2002 ; Maluccio et al., 2000 ; Habibov et al., 2019 ).

Instruments

This is the first study to employ IV regression to evaluate the effect of social trust on women’s empowerment. The majority of earlier research has cross-sectional correlation designs, which renders the results susceptible to the problems of reverse causality, unobserved factors, and measurement error. Indeed, it is conceivable that causality runs in the opposite direction, specifically, from women’s empowerment towards higher trust. For instance, women with higher levels of trust may be more likely to be engaged in entrepreneurship, which would increase their level of empowerment. It is similarly conceivable that there could be unobservable factors, for example, personality traits or a previous history of relationships, that simultaneously affect trust and empowerment. Finally, both trust and empowerment are attitudinal subjective variables that are prone to a high degree of measurement error (Edlund, 2006 ). If issues related to reverse causality, unobserved factors, and measurement error are not taken explicitly into account, the result of regression model estimations will be inefficient and biased (Cameron and Trivedi, 2022 ). Estimation of IV requires instruments which are variables that are correlated with the predictor, but not the outcome. Two instruments, namely, population density and willingness to take the risk, are used in our main analysis, while the additional pair of instruments that are used for robustness analysis includes: latitude and caloric sustainability index.

Population density

The first instrument that is used in the main analysis is population. Population density is used as an instrument for social trust since it is a common determinant of social trust and is widely used in the existing literature (Beaumont et al., 2021 ). Higher population densities could theoretically cause public mistrust since “dense” social situations encourage individuals to withdraw inward in order to protect their privacy (Collier, 1998 ). This theoretical postulate was tested and confirmed in a number of population-based empirical studies across the world (Brueckner and Largey, 2008 ; Kim et al., 2011 ; Taylor et al., 2007 ). This postulate was also confirmed by experimental studies that demonstrated that reduced population density has been linked to acts of helpfulness (a notion closely connected to reciprocity and social trust) displayed by locals to strangers (Levine et al., 1994 ).

Willingness to take the risk

The second instrument that is used in the main analysis, is the degree of willingness to take the risk (Papadimitri et al., 2021 ). The theoretical reasoning behind this instrument is the Hofstede model (Hofstede, 2001 ), which postulates the significant differences between individualistic and collectivistic societies in relation to risk-taking. In collectivistic societies, people tend to value the collective over the individual and emphasize group accomplishments that require collective actions and hence higher levels of social trust (Gaganis et al., 2019 ). In contrast, in individualistic societies with lower needs for collaboration, cooperation, cohesion, and social trust, people tend to be more self-centered, independent, and primarily concerned with themselves and their close family members (Gaganis et al., 2019 ). In turn, individualism tends to promote overconfidence, underestimation of risks, and a higher likelihood of being engaged in risk-taking (Chui et al., 2010 ; Breuer et al., 2014 ; Ferris et al., 2013 ; Van den Steen, 2004 ). Conversely, people in collectivistic societies exhibit higher degrees of uncertainty avoidance and take fewer risks (Hofstede et al., 2010 ).

Latitude is an instrument that is used in the robustness analysis. Latitude is the absolute latitudinal distance from the community to the equator. Geographic latitude has been employed as an instrument of social trust in a number of previous studies since individuals residing in high-latitude areas are more likely to trust each other to help each other survive harsh weather (Folland, 2007 ; Lee and Law, 2017 ), while historically, trade relationships were more developed in lower latitude coastal areas where individuals developed more open-minded trusting attitudes towards strangers (Xiong et al., 2017 ; Papadimitri et al., 2021 ).

Caloric sustainability index

The Caloric Sustainability Index is another instrument for the robustness analysis. It is an indicator of the agricultural potential gauged which is defined the caloric yield that has been available for cultivation in the period after 1500 (Galor and Özak, 2016 ). The theoretical reasoning behind using this instrument is that low suitability for agriculture is associated with higher degrees of cooperation and the collective actions that are required for planning and harvesting (Ashkanasy et al., 2004 ; Gaganis et al., 2019 , Meggers, 1954 ). Thus, lower levels of land productivity in the past have been found to be a direct precursor to higher levels of current trust (Litina, 2016 ).

Data, variables, and measurement

Although designing a survey to specifically capture community social trust and women’s empowerment would be ideal, it is very costly to create such surveys, especially to cover multiple countries. As such, surveys that test social trust and women’s empowerment are presently limited to very few selected countries (Hanmer and Klugman, 2016 ). To increase the generalizability and universality of findings, researchers have to turn to publicly available surveys that are currently in existence and that cover a large number of countries. The Life-in-Transition Survey (henceforth LITS) is one of the best currently available surveys for this purpose (Habibov et al., 2017a ). The LITS is a cross-sectional and multidisciplinary survey that contains records on the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of respondents and their beliefs and attitudes (EBRD, 2016 ). The third wave of the LITS first introduced questions about women’s status. It is for this reason that this current study is based on the third wave, which was conducted in 2016. In total, our sample consists of 23,292 women who reside in 26 post-communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe and Eurasia, including the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. The LITS uses a consistent survey design methodology, sampling design, and research questions that render direct comparability of data across countries (Habibov et al., 2017b ). In each country under investigation, about 1500 individuals were interviewed by trained interviewers. The number of women participating in the survey in each country can be found in Table 1 .

Guided by previous studies that used publicly available surveys (Aktakke et al., 2019 ; Barrett et al., 2012 ; Habibov et al., 2017a ; Davis and Williamson, 2019 ), we constructed two indices that capture women’s empowerment: (1) the Index of Women’s Asset Ownership and (2) the Index of Women’s Autonomy in Household Decision-Making. The Index of Women’s Asset Ownership is based on LITS questions that ask women about their ownership of three types of assets, namely, (a) land, (b) bank account, and (c) dwelling. The answers to these three questions are binomial (1= Yes, if women report ownership of a particular asset; 0 = No, if no ownership). The answers to these three questions are added up to create the summative Index of Women’s Asset Ownership. The index varies from 0 if a woman does not possess any assets to 3 if she possesses all three types of assets. Thus, a higher value of this index indicates a higher degree of asset ownership.

The Index of Women’s Autonomy in Household Decision-Making is based on three questions about the degree of a woman’s independence in taking decisions on: (a) controlling daily expenditures and paying bills; (b) saving, investing, and borrowing; and (c) making significant purchases for the home. The answers to these three questions are binomial. The responses are coded as 1 if the decisions are taken by the woman herself, equally with the partner, or equally with someone else in the family. In contrast, responses are coded as 0 if decisions are taken by a partner, by someone else in the family, or by someone else outside the family. The binomial responses are added up into the summative Index of Women’s Autonomy in Household Decision-Making. The index varies from 0 to 3. A higher value of the index reflects a higher level of autonomy for a woman.

The main predictor of interest is community social trust. Social trust was derived from the following question in the LITS: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? Please tell me on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means you can’t be too careful and 10 means that most people can be trusted”. Following the literature, individual responses averaged across communities will gauge the level of community social trust (Kim et al., 2011 ; Campos-Matos et al., 2015 ; Habibov and Cheung, 2018 ).

The first Instrument, population density, is measured as persons/km2 and is taken from the International Database of the US Census Bureau ( 2016 ). The second instrument, the degree of willingness to take the risk, is measured by using a question in the LITS that asks respondents to rate their willingness to take risks on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means that a respondent is not willing to take risks at all, and 10 means that the respondent is very willing to take risks. The responses are averaged at the country level to arrive at a country-level indicator of risk-taking.

We control for a comprehensive set of covariates that have been shown in earlier studies to have an effect on the level of women’s empowerment (Abbas et al., 2021 ; Abu-Lughod, 2009 ; Cinar and Kose, 2018 ). These covariates at the individual level encompass socio-economic characteristics such as age, marital status, education, and employment. At the family level, these covariates capture family compositional characteristics, namely, the share of young children (aged 0–7), older children (aged 8–17), adults (older than 16 and younger than 65), and elderly (aged 65 or older). Other family covariates capture socio-economic factors such as family income and expenditures, as well as place of residence in terms of rural vs. urban residence. All individual and family-level covariates are from the LITS. At the country level, cross-country variation is gauged by the Human Development Index, which has been compiled by the United Nations ( 2016 ) to incorporate life expectancy, educational attainment, and gross national income per capita, as well as a percentage of annual GDP growth by the World Bank ( 2016 ).

All variables used in the analysis (including outcomes, predictor, covariates and instruments), their definitions, and descriptive statistics can be found in Table 2 .

Method: instrumental variables

The simplest statistical technique to estimate the effect of community trust on women’s empowerment is to compute a conventional OLS model with one of the women’s empowerment indices serves as the dependent variable of interest while community level trust serves as the independent variable of interest. However, as mentioned in the opening section, such a basic method provides inconsistent and biased results due to endogeneity in the form of reverse causality, omitted variables, and measurement error. To tackle endogeneity, we estimate an instrumental variable (IV) regression model that consists of two stages, where each stage is an OLS regression (Cameron and Trivedi, 2022 ). In the first stage of OLS regression, the predictor, community trust, is regressed on a set of covariates and an instrument. In the second stage of OLS regression, the outcome variable, one of the indices of women’s empowerment, is regressed on the estimated value of community trust from the first stage and the set of covariates. The mathematical model used in this study can be summarized as follows:

\({{IV}}_{i}\) represents the excluded exogenous regressors. It is the instrument variable. \({Y}_{i}\) is the dependent variable for the ith observation and \({Z}_{i}\) is the predictor (represents the endogenous regressors) that is trust at community level. \({{\rm{X}}}_{{\rm{i}}}\) ’s is the set of covariates.

All estimations are conducted with Stata software package version 15.

Analytical plan

Estimation of IV regression can provide consistent and unbiased results if the selected instrument meets two conditions: the instrument is theoretically justified and empirically associated with the predictor (relevance condition), and the instrument is not directly correlated with the outcome (exclusion condition). As discussed and justified in the Theoretical Foundation section of the paper, two instruments, namely, (a) population density and (b) willingness to take the risk meet these conditions from the theoretical point of view. Furthermore, these conditions are empirically tested and reported in section 4.4 below.

Each of the instruments is used for separate analyses. Thus, all IV models that are estimated with population density as an instrument are denoted as Set A. In comparison, all IV models estimated with risk-taking as an instrument are denoted as Set B. Since we have two outcome variables of interest, estimations with Set A and Set B are conducted and reported separately for each outcome. In addition, in the sensitivity analysis, we extend our main model to test the robustness of the results for separate rural/urban and age samples, as well as the inclusion of individual-level trust and an additional set of instrumental variables.

OLS results

The results of single-stage OLS estimates are reported in the first two models of Table 3 . Model 1 reports OLS results for the Women’s Asset Ownership Index. Results suggest that a one-unit increase in community-level social trust is associated with an increase in women’s asset ownership by a factor of 0.103. Model 2 reports OLS results for the Women’s Autonomy in Household Decision-Making Index. Results suggest that there is no statistically significant association between social trust and women’s autonomy in decision-making. It should be recalled that classic OLS does not take into account the problems of reverse causality, omitted variables, and measurement error. Therefore, the results of OLS models should be considered descriptive and serve as a benchmark for further analysis with IV models.

Main results with IV

The results of IV estimations are reported in the last four columns of Table 3 . Models 3 and 4 show the results of IV estimations for Set A (where the instrument is population density). Both models indicate that higher levels of trust lead to a higher degree of women’s empowerment, although the effect of social trust is relatively stronger in magnitude for asset ownership as compared to household decision-making. Thus, Model 3 suggests that for a unit increase in social trust, women’s asset ownership increases by a factor of 1.215. In comparison, Model 4 suggests that for a unit increase in social trust, women’s autonomy in household decision-making improved by a factor of 0.270.

The results of IV estimations for Set B (where the instrument is risk-taking) are presented in Models 5 and 6. Again, both models indicate a significant positive effect of social trust on women’s empowerment, with the effect of social trust being a little bit stronger in magnitude for asset ownership as compared with household decision-making. For a unit increase in trust, asset ownership improves by a factor of 0.555 in Model 5, while household decision-making improves by a factor of 0.540.

The comparison across OLS and IV models in Table 3 reveals that OLS results are lower than IV results regardless of what instrument is employed. Such results signal that single-stage OLS models considerably underestimate the true effect of social trust on women’s empowerment since they do not take into account the problems of reverse causality, omitted variables, and measurement error.

Robustness testing and main model extensions

Several checks are performed to examine the robustness of our main results. First, the results are tested for separate urban and rural samples. The objective is to find out if the positive effect of trust on women’s empowerment could be observed in both samples, given that more patriarchal attitudes could be expected in rural areas than urban ones. Second, the results are tested for separate samples of younger and older women. The objective is to find out if the positive impact of trust on women’s empowerment varies considerably with age since trust may vary with socialization and experience. Fourth, the results are tested for the inclusion of social trust at the individual level, which can be correlated with the community-level social trust model. Finally, the results are tested for an alternative set of two instruments.

The results of IV estimations for separate urban and rural samples are presented in Table 4 . The results of estimations using Set A in Models 7 to 10 signal a positive effect of trust on women’s empowerment. This holds true for both outcomes of interest. The results of estimations using Set B in Models 11 to 14 tell a similar story. Nevertheless, it should be highlighted that, in all estimations, the magnitude of the effect of social trust on women’s empowerment is higher for rural samples. In fairness, the difference in effect between rural and urban samples is not substantial.

The results of IV estimations for women younger than 45 and older than 45 are presented in Table 5 . The results of estimations using Set A in Models 15 to 18 indicate a positive effect of trust on empowerment for both groups of women, irrespective of the outcome variable of interest. The results of estimations using Set B in Models 19 to 22 are comparable. Interestingly, in the majority of models (Models 15 to 20), the magnitude of the trust effect is greater for the sample of older women. In contrast, in Models 21 and 22, the magnitude of the effect is greater for the sample of younger women.

The results are tested for the inclusion of social trust at the individual level in Table 6 . The results of estimations using Sets A and B in Models 23 to Model 26 confirm the positive effect of community-level social trust on empowerment after controlling for individual- level trust. Note the negative sign for the individual level of trust. Such a counterintuitive direction of the effect is likely to be the result of multicollinearity with community-level trust. The community level of trust is not affected by multicollinearity because it is controlled by instruments, while individual-level trust is not.

Finally, our main models are tested by including a different set of instruments, namely, (a) Latitude and (b) the Caloric Suitability Index. Latitude is measured as the absolute latitudinal distance from the community to the equator, which is available in the LITS. The Caloric Suitability Index is available from Galor and Özak ( 2016 ).

The results of IV estimation with an alternative pair of instruments are reported in Models 27 and 28 of Table 6 . Reported results confirm that social trust leads to significant improvements in indicators of women’s empowerment.

Testing the estimated IV models

To test the assumption that the instrument is correlated with the predictor, the first-stage robust F statistic is estimated and reported for all models at the end of the respective tables (Cameron and Trivedi, 2022 ). The significant F statistic that is higher than 10 indicates that all estimated regression model instruments are strongly correlated with the predictor.

To test for a weak instrument, the formal test proposed by Stock and Yogo ( 2005 ) is used. The minimum eigenvalue statistics and Stock and Yogo’s critical values are estimated and reported for all models at the end of the respective tables. In all models, the minimum eigenvalue statistics are considerably lower than Stock and Yogo’s critical values indicating that our instruments are not weak (Stock et al., 2002 ; Stock and Yogo, 2002 ).

To test endogeneity, Durbin and Wu-Hausman tests for endogeneity are estimated for all models and reported at the end of the respective tables (Cameron and Trivedi, 2022 ). The significant value of the tests signals the presence of endogeneity. Such results suggest that IV should preferred over the single-stage models, such as OLS, since estimation of OLS in this case will produce biased results.

To test whether instruments are not correlated with the outcome other than via the predictor, Sargan and Basman overidentification tests are estimated for the models with two instruments (Models 27–28). Non-significant results of these tests confirm that taken together these instruments are not correlated with outcome (Baum, 2006 ). Although Sargan and Basman tests are for the models with two instruments and hence are not available for the models with a single instrument, Pearson’s correlation between each instrument and each outcome in all models with a single instrument is not higher than r = 0.1 (Cameron and Trivedi, 2022 ). Such correlation is considered negligible in the literature (Schober et al., 2018 ).

It should be noted that all instruments are measured at a larger geographical area than the predictor of interest, inasmuch as our instruments are at the country level, while the predictor is at the community level. The reason is that the severity of endogeneity is likely to decrease with an increase in the geographic size of the instrument (Dustmann and Preston, 2001 ; Awaworyi Churchill et al., 2019 ).

Discussion and implications

Given the paucity of studies on the effect of contextualized community-level social capital, and especially social trust, on the empowerment of women, we examined such an effect on a large and diverse sample of 26 post-communist countries. Reviewing results from the existing literature enables us to theorize that higher levels of community social trust will translate into higher levels of women’s empowerment. In the spirit of the previous studies, women’s empowerment is conceptualized as women’s ownership of assets and their decision-making authority in the family. To empirically test this theoretical assumption, we estimated single-stage OLS and IV regression models.

In line with our theoretical reasoning, the results of this paper suggest that community trust strengthens women’s empowerment. The results indicate that an increase in community-level trust leads to an increase in women’s ownership of assets and in women’s decision-making authority in the family. The assumption of a positive impact of community trust on women’s empowerment could be theoretically based on the findings of previous studies. However, there is a concern that this assumption has never been tested and confirmed. Hence, the main theoretical contribution of this paper is that it empirically proves this theoretical assumption. Importantly, our findings are robust for the separate samples of rural and urban, and younger and older women. Equally, our findings are robust for an alternative set of instruments.

Furthermore, our findings are also robust for controlling for individual-level trust and a comprehensive set of covariates at the individual, family, and country levels. The effect of community-level trust remains positive and significant even when we include individual trust and other covariates in the equations. This finding highlights the fact that community trust has an independent effect on women’s empowerment. As the first study to cover so many diverse countries with different cultures, traditions, and levels of socio-economic development, the generalizability of the findings has increased.

In addition, this study provides clarification on the causal link between community social trust and women’s empowerment. The estimation of IV models strengthens our conviction about the strong positive effect of community trust on women’s empowerment. At the same time, our findings help to quantify the effect of community social trust by highlighting the large differences in the estimated effect of community social trust between OLS and IV. They suggest that OLS (and other classic single-stage models) are likely to produce inefficient and biased results because of the problems of reverse causality, omitted variables, and measurement error. Consequently, caution should be exercised when evaluating the results of single-stage models.

From an organizational standpoint, the findings of this study suggest that community interventions aimed at developing and maintaining women’s groups will not only offer emotional and social support for women but will enable women to get access to assets and increase their decision-making authority. The example of such successful interventions can be found in developing countries and well-documented in the literature (Alemu et al., 2018 ; Po and Hickey, 2020 ). Thus, the organizations that are involved in community development should adapt these interventions to the specific conditions of the post-communist countries.

From the government standpoint, policymakers, social administrators, and government authorities who are working on promoting gender equality should give priority to promoting community-based interventions that nurture and maintain women’s trust. Adopting relevant legislation and regulation, formalizing women’s organizations, for instance, women self-help groups, women conversation groups, and other women informal groups, as well as channeling financial resources towards such organizations are identified in the literature as effective ways to facilitate the development of trust (Machio et al. 2022 ; Thapa Karki and Xheneti, 2018 ). For women who seek empowerment and men who want to help empower women, the findings of this study suggest that they should consider joining women’s groups in the community as the pathway to improve their empowerment (Nayak and Panigrahi, 2020 ).

Based on the insights from this study, much more research is warranted on this interesting topic. Future studies should extend the investigation of social trust to the nexus of women’s empowerment along several complementary avenues. First, they should include a wider range of indicators that could better gauge different dimensions of women’s empowerment and social trust beyond those used in the current study. For instance, increasing the range of relevant women’s assets could be a very useful way to confirm and extend our findings. Second, in comparison with the secondary analysis of the existing survey, the development of specific purpose surveys could lead to the acquisition of richer information about trust and empowerment. Ideally, such a survey would allow for country-by-country comparisons, which this study was not able to employ due to the small country samples that were available to it. Comparing the effect of trust on the empowerment of women in countries with different levels of socio-economic development, especially those with different levels of women’s empowerment, could complement the findings of the current study. Third, despite the fact that there are no theoretical or empirical grounds on which to believe that the instruments may have had a direct impact on the outcome, such a probability cannot be fully dismissed. Finally, qualitative studies could provide excellent information about which of the dimensions of empowerment and trust are the most important. Likewise, qualitative studies can provide important information about the mechanisms through which trust translates to empowerment. Overall, the implications and caveats of the current study should be kept in mind to help shape future investigations Footnote 1 .

Data availability

The data sets used or analyzed during the current study are provided as supplementary files.

While Machio et al. ( 2022 ) employed IV method as well, their study does not consider social trust and does not take into consideration contextualized community-level indicators.

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AA and NH initiated the present study. AA designed the theoretical foundation in conjunction with NH. NH, AA, and LF worked together on the study design. YL, NH, and AA analyzed data. YL, NH, and LF were responsible for results interpretation. NH, AA, and LF formulated the discussion and implications. All authors contributed to producing the draft of the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Auchynnikava, A., Habibov, N., Lyu, Y. et al. Effect of the contextual (community) level social trust on women’s empowerment: an instrumental variable analysis of 26 nations. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 648 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03123-0

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Progress of the World's Women is UN Women's flagship report. It tracks progress on gender equality around the world, with each edition focusing on a particular theme. The 2011-2012 report is about women's access to justice, with chapters on legal frameworks, the justice chain, legal pluralism, and justice for women during and after conflict. It also includes a section on tracking the MDGs from a gender perspective; and statistical annexes, including original global data on laws on violence against women.

Safer Sooner Report

Elizabeth Blackney , Eleanor Ann Nwadinobi , Eliza Johnson

The Every Woman Coalition reached the consensus that a stand alone treaty to end, and prevent, violence against women and girls is the best, next step. Level the law: the patchwork of protection afforded women and girls leaves the vast majority without an opportunity to pursue justice through the courts. Dozens of studies point to the legal, geographic, and enforcement gaps that continue to isolate victims and survivors of violence. Decades of research by civil society, governments, and international entities, demonstrates that a whole-of-society, whole-of-government approach lowers rates of violence. An analysis of global violence estimates that violence against women costs the global economy US$4.7 trillion per year, or 5.5 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product. Survivors need a treaty that centers them and provides the global binding norm necessary to adjudicate their cases. The stand-alone treaty our coalition supports will prioritize closing the Normative and Geographic Gaps in International Law. The stand-alone treaty our coalition supports will be a Globally Applicable Instrument. The stand-alone treaty our coalition supports will close the Enforcement Gap with an innovative narrative + metrics-based approach. The stand-alone treaty our coalition supports will catalyze funding, just as the Landmine Treaty did in 1997. The stand-alone treaty our coalition supports will accelerate the fulfillment of Sustainable Development Goal Number 5. Violence against women is a human rights violation, a public health emergency, and an economic crisis.

Browne, E., Haider, H., Oddsdottir, F., Rohwerder, B., & Strachan, A. L. (2014). Gender in fragile and conflict-affected situations (Rapid Literature Review). Birmingham, UK: GSDRC, University of Birmingham.

Brigitte Rohwerder , Evie Browne , Anna Louise Strachan

This rapid literature review, in annotated bibliography format, provides a bibliography of some of the most recent literature published in 2013 and 2014 (up to April 2014) on the topic of gender in fragile and conflict-affected situations. It includes all types of available written material, including peer-reviewed articles, impact evaluations, policy papers, NGO position papers, toolkits, and UN documents. The report is broken down into seven thematic sections: - gender and justice; - women’s leadership and political participation; - women’s access to economic empowerment and opportunities; - combatting sexual and gender based violence; - women, peace and security; - responsiveness of plans and budgets to gender equality; - gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Gender in Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations: Literature Review

Freyja Oddsdóttir

This rapid review collates a large amount of literature published in 2013 and 2014 (up to April 2014) on the topic of gender in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS). It is not a systematic or exhaustive review, but does provide a comprehensive overview of the literature available. It includes all types of available written material, including peer-reviewed articles, impact evaluations, policy papers, NGO position papers, toolkits, and UN documents. The report is broken down into seven thematic sections requested by the European Commission: • gender and justice; • women’s leadership and political participation; • women’s access to economic empowerment and opportunities; • combatting sexual and gender based violence; • women, peace and security; • responsiveness of plans and budgets to gender equality; • gender equality and women’s empowerment. The first section (Global) collates articles under these headings, and reflects global or broad literature which looks at these issues from a wide perspective. The second section (Regional) collates articles which look at specific country case studies, grouped by world region. Within these sections, literature is also grouped under the seven thematic headings to enable quick reference to these topics. The literature refers to any situations of conflict or disaster within a country, not necessarily only in countries identified as fragile states. The report focuses on some specific countries of interest identified by the EC: Bolivia, Chad, Colombia, DR of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Haiti, India, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, West Bank and Gaza, and Zimbabwe.

Becky Mitchell

There is still a considerable lack of systematic and rigorous understanding about the impact of violent conflict on women‘s roles, activities and aspirations, or about the nature and magnitude of the benefits of including women more fully in economic recovery and peace-building processes. Patricia Justino, Ivan Cardona, Catherine Muller and Becky Mitchell Policy programming around gender issues in post-conflict contexts is currently being designed based on limited rigorous evidence, and incorporates inadequate procedures to evaluate its impact in terms of gender roles and gender equality. This situation has at times resulted in misplaced interventions and the continued emphasis on the reintegration of (male) combatants, and male employment generation programmes. The main aim of this report is to analyse how changes in the roles and activities of women during episodes of violent conflict may shape their contribution to post-conflict economic recovery and sustainable peace. The report poses two important questions for which limited evidence is to date available in the academic literature on violent conflict or in policy programming in post-conflict contexts: 1) How does violent conflict change the roles that women take on within their households and communities? 2) How do changes in female roles during conflict affect women‘s own status after the conflict, and the capacity of households and communities to recover from the conflict?

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The “Women’s economic empowerment strategy” articulates UN Women’s vision for enabling women’s economic agency, autonomy, and well-being. The strategy assesses the global landscape and UN Women’s role in realizing the economic rights of women and girls. It lays out the global context for work on women’s economic empowerment, provides a rights-based and transformative definition of economic empowerment, identifies gaps in current global efforts to achieve women’s economic empowerment, and then situates  UN Women’s work on women’s economic empowerment  within these broader efforts.

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