Can Access to Contraception Deliver for Women’s Economic Empowerment? What We Know – and What We Must Learn

Center for Global Development "By adopting the Sustainable Development Goals, the world signaled its commitment to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” by 2030. Among its targets, SDG 5 specifically calls to “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” (5.6), and, separately, to “ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership… in political, economic, and public life” (5.5).

(...) Theory and some empirical evidence suggest the two goals – reproductive rights for women and women’s economic empowerment – are connected: reproductive rights should strengthen women’s economic power. But our understanding of the magnitude of the possible connection and the nature of any causal link in different times and places is limited. In this note we summarize what we know up to now and what more we could learn about that connection." (Photo: Dirk Vorderstraße/flickr)

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