Literature Review 1
Victoria Freire
PLCY 805: Policy Analysis and Research Design
Steven Manley
February 12, 2023
Literature Review 2
Impact of Reproductive Health Services on Women’s Economic Empowerment
Ever since the Second World War, the world has been focusing on women’s economic
empowerment given their place in society. Previously, it was men dominating the economic
space and the employment market, thereby making important decisions that touch on the family
and society at large. The Gates Foundation defines women’s economic empowerment as the
transformative process that will help girls and women gain the necessary resources, skills, and
opportunities to compete equitably in the markets.1 It is the transformative process that will help
them shift from limited choice, power, and voice to control and benefit from economic activities.
There are three features behind the empowered economic actor. The first is making one gain
access to both assets and income. The second is to give them the power to make important
decisions without fear of retribution or violence. The third is to enable them to control and
benefit from economic gains made.
One of the ways that women are empowered economically is to give them access to
reproductive health services. According to the UNHCR, these are services that enable women to
exercise their right to reproductive health; for instance, the provision of contraceptive services
and abortion care.2 When given access to these services, women will be able to choose when to
become pregnant, thus being able to make other important life decisions, such as, furthering their
education, pursuing a career, or starting a business. Otherwise, many women are negatively
impacted by unplanned pregnancies, denying them the chance to make such decisions. The
general belief is that giving women access to reproductive health services will empower them
1 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “Women’s Economic Empowerment: Our Approach”, Available at
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/equal-is-greater/our-approach/#:~:text=We%20define%20women's%20economic
%20empowerment,control%20and%20benefit%20from%20economic
2 UNHCR, “Sexual and Reproductive Health”, available at https://www.unhcr.org/reproductive-health.html
Literature Review 3
economically. However, there is a gap in research as to whether this is the outcome in society.
This research seeks to fill this gap by asking the question:
How does access to reproductive health services (family planning services, birth control,
abortion) impact women’s economic empowerment?
One of the dependent variables (DV) showing women’s economic engagement is employment
status.
Review of Literature
To begin with, Marlene Lee makes it clear that a woman who is economically empowered
will be able to advance by having the power and chance to act on important economic decisions.
One of the ways of achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN’s SDGs)
is to improve women’s access to financial resources, employment, as well as business
opportunities.3 When it comes to the impact of reproductive health on women’s economic
advancement, Lee’s study arrives at the following four findings. First, an improvement in
women’s reproductive health will improve their economic empowerment. When women can
access abortion services, there will be a reduction in fertility, they will have fewer children,
thereby increasing their participation in the labor force. Second, expanding women’s use of
contraceptives will improve their education, agency, and inclusion in the labor force. Third, the
reduction of adolescent childbearing will increase the likelihood of girls/women completing
school and participating in the formal labor market later on. In many areas investigated, marriage
in the early years is connected to reduced empowerment, agency, as well as educational
attainment. This has been found to be common in sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of Asia.
3 Marlene Lee, The Effect of Reproductive Health Improvements on Women’s Economic Empowerment: A Review
through the Population and Poverty (PopPov) lens (Population Reference Bureau, 2017).
Literature Review 4
Fourth, having longer birth intervals and fewer children will increase the participation of women
in the labor market.4 The finding is that when women have a longer span of time between the
children they are giving birth to, they will be able to work and take care of the children.
Finlay & Lee conduct a similar study to the one above. The results to Finlay & Lee’s
study are that improving women’s access to financial resources, employment and business
opportunities will contribute to the achievement of the UN’s SDGs. To this effect, the two
reviewed the PopPov Research Initiative results in the last decade to see whether or not an
improvement in the reproductive health of women ended with their economic empowerment.5
They selected papers that were made public after 2006 and focused on women’s economic
empowerment linked to reproductive health improvements. The findings revealed that indeed,
enhancing the reproductive health of women contributed to an improvement in their economic
empowerment.6 Enhancing their use of contraceptives improved their education attainment,
agency, and participation in the labor force. More so, reducing the adolescent childbearing years
will increase the likelihood of women completing school and participating in the formal labor
marketplace. Last but not least, Finlay & Lee also found that women having fewer children
increases their participation in the labor force.
Finlay also conducts another review of literature that looks into the nexus between
women’s reproductive health and economic activity. One of her findings is that there is a
connection between women’s reproductive health, gender equality, and employment.7 First, there
is a relationship between a woman’s fertility and her workforce involvement. This takes into
4 Ibid.
5 Jocelyn E. Finlay and Marlene Lee, “Identifying Causal Effects of Reproductive Health Improvements on
Women’s Economic Empowerment through the Population Poverty Research Initiative, The Milbank Quarterly,
96(2) (2018): 300-322.
6 Ibid.
7 Jocelyn E Finlay, “Women’s Reproductive Health and Economic Activity”, Harvard Review, 2020.
Literature Review 5
consideration the number of children a woman can have, as well as the spacing and timing. This
affects the job quality and career advancement of women. The greater number of children with
little spacing and timing can negatively affect the quality of jobs that women can attain as well as
chances for career advancement. Women with fewer children will have better jobs and more
income. This connection can be seen in macroeconomic, microeconomic, cross-sectional, and
within-unit data across time. Second, there is a connection between gender-based violence and
the chance for women to participate in the labor market. According to this research, the more a
woman is able to participate in the labor force, the more there is a risk of intimate partner
violence.8 The reason for this is that working women threaten men’s roles as breadwinners.
Therefore, this can bring retaliation in terms of violence. More so, women can face violence
anywhere they engage in the labor market. They encounter threats on their way to work, face
sexual violence at work, and violence when they come back home.
Another literature review done is by Onareheim and others9. The cross-sectional
systematic review studies data from ten databases to find important intergenerational
associations. According to them, evidence supports the economic justification for investing
towards women’s health focuses more on reproductive health. They look at the implication of
their reproductive roles and non-reproductive ones. Gender roles, however, vary in different
settings. The productivity of women will somehow be more highly valued in societies where they
are traditionally breadwinners compared to men.10 Nonetheless, it is important for women to
have good health (including reproductive) because it is good for the production of human capital
8 Ibid.
9 Kristine Onarheim, Johanne Helene, and David Bloom. “Economic Benefits of Investing in Women’s Health: A
Systematic Review.” PLoS One 11(3) (2016): e0150120.
10 Heera, KC and others, “Women’s Empowerment for Abortion and Family Planning Decision Making among
Marginalized Women: A Mixed Method Study”, Reproductive Health, 18(28) (2021).
Literature Review 6
and child development. Reproductive health services are gains for not only the women
themselves but also their families and societies at large.11 However, this research points to certain
areas that require further research. One of them is the impact of education, health, and fertility
for future generations and women’s health. The researchers argue that the literature is suggestive
of this impact but not decisive.
Vizheh and others also refer to the baseline utilized by Lee and Finlay & Lee. According
to their research, there are metrics known to showcase women empowerment, all of which are
very instrumental towards attaining the SDG5, “achieving gender equality and empowering all
women and girls”.12 To this end, Vizheh and others look at how sexual and reproductive health
measurements balance with women empowerment scales. Using the systematic literature
methodology, they search through international electronic databases to find studies that talk
about both women's empowerment and sexual/reproductive health. They finally arrive at fifteen
studies and made the following conclusions: women empowerment is indeed a multi-level
concept.13 There are structural and social constructs that may hinder women from exercising their
agency, and these are hindrances far from the barriers they face within their families/marriages.
The degree to which the woman is empowered will be determined by many factors at various
levels – interpersonal, intrapersonal, and ecological levels. Also, there are economic, cultural,
and social systems that shape these parameters of empowerment depending on the context.14 For
instance, women's empowerment (regardless of their household characteristics) can/will be
11 Ibid.
12 Maryam Vizheh and others, “Women Empowerment in Reproductive Health: A Systematic Review of
Measurement Properties,” BMC Women’s Health, 21(424) (2021).
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
Literature Review 7
determined by the accessibility of health services, the cultural expectations, the level of power
they have in their relationships, and the women’s position in society.
Gammage, Sarah, Shareen Joshi, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers talk about the
intersections between women’s health, quality of work, and responsibilities.15 Their research is
informed by the suggestion that women’s economic empowerment will manifest in the choices
they make with regard to work, and their workplace’s terms and conditions, all of which are
determined by not only their reproductive empowerment but their reproductive outcomes as well.
Any tangible improvement towards introducing women into the labor force require more than
getting women to school, it requires enforcing their reproductive rights and health.16 Even though
the three acknowledge this, they point out that there are data limitations that will facilitate a
proper inquiry into fertility and employment outcomes. Therefore, there is a need for statistical
agencies and analysts responsible for the labor force and household survey to take this into
consideration.
Gammage then teams up with Dana Stefow to explicate the following. All around the
world, women’s reproductive years somehow overlap with their economically productive years.
Therefore, it is understood that pregnancies and childbearing will affect their ability to choose
where they can work and the types of economic activities or opportunities they can pursue.17
Therefore, it baffles them to see that programs (which promote women’s economic
empowerment) tend to ignore this key factor. According to the two, women’s reproductive and
sexual rights can be met if they have not only economic access but also legal access to health
15 Sarah Gammage, Shareen Joshi, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, “The Intersection of Women’s Economic
and Reproductive Empowerment”, Feminist Economics 26(1) (2020): 1-22.
16 Ibid.
17 Sarah Gammage and Dana Stefow, “Opinion: Decent Work for Women Calls for Sexual and Reproductive
Rights”, Devex, 25 October 2019, available at https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-decent-work-for-women-calls-
for-sexual-and-reproductive-rights-95859
Literature Review 8
systems where they can get essential family planning and contraceptive services. Otherwise, they
will struggle to be healthy, attain education, and engage in economic activities. Statistics show
that for every additional child, a women’s labor force participation reduces by 10-15%, and this
is for women between 25 and 39 years of age.18 Education and earning is determined by the
space of birth and timing of the children because it gives women the freedom to engage in
economic activities.
As well, there is evidence to show that an improvement in women’s reproductive health
will increase their life expectancy, labor force participation, her incomes, incentives to go to
school, and asset accumulation. An example of research that points to this is by the Guttmacher
Institute, which shows that the earlier the women accessed contraceptives, the more likely they
increased their earnings, gained employment, and also attended higher post-secondary
education.19 Otherwise, teenage pregnancies will interfere with their ability to graduate and find
meaningful jobs later in life. Women will tend to have higher care burdens in situations where
they cannot control how they space their children. They also have specific choices to make. In
Thailand and Malaysia, for instance, women that gave birth early will start businesses or find
work in the informal sector than find formal jobs.
Asaolu and others find a similar outcome from their survey conducted in Nigeria.20
Survey results show women that are empowered will be able to plan their pregnancies, delay
their marriages, have healthy childbirth, and receive prenatal care. These results come from
Asaolu and fellow researchers after looking at the demographic and health survey data of over
35,000 women without desire to have children in two years or did not want more children.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibitola Asaolu and others, “Association between Measures of Women’s Empowerment and Use of Modern
Contraceptives: An Analysis of Nigeria’s Demographic and Health Surveys,” Frontiers in Public Health, 4, 2017.
Literature Review 9
Examples of women empowerment included giving them access to finance and implementing
policies that protected women against all forms of violence.21 In the end, three-quarters of
women participated in microfinance programs, all of them improving their socioeconomic
statuses. The women also had access to smartphones and the Internet, which enabled them to
access e-commerce and mobile health. However, their research establishes that the use of modern
contraceptives has been low. Therefore, given Nigeria’s high total fertility rate, this is a need that
is yet to be met.22 In other words, Nigerian leaders need to do more to increase women’s access
to reproductive health to increase their empowerment.
Some researchers have revealed how women face unique challenges compared to men.
Women play an incredibly significant role as their children’s primary caregivers. In sub-Saharan
Africa, the health and life of a child after being born (especially the early years) depends a lot on
the mother.23 Mothers are the ones that not only care for their children but protect them as well.
Whenever they can, they will channel all their household resources toward the children.
Consequently, there is evidence to show that women (in low-income settings) who earn an
income will spend more on their household compared to men. For instance, they will spend on
the family’s education, food, and medicine.24 The women can even borrow to facilitate this.
Therefore, women who are income earners will improve their family’s health. The children will
be healthy, eat well, and attend school. This is why it becomes important to invest in women’s
health so that they can make important socioeconomic decisions to help their families. It will be
of great benefit to not only them but the family and society at large. Although pregnancy is not a
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Greenwood AM, et al. “Prospective Survey of the Outcome of Pregnancy in a Rural Area of the Gambia.” Bull
World Health Organ 65(5) 1987:635–43.
24 Tinker, Anne. Safe Motherhood as a Social and Economic Investment: Technical Consultation on Safe
Motherhood. Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1997.
Literature Review 10
sickness, the birthing process and high fertility will impact the economic and health aspects of
women immensely.
Bahn, Kate et al. make it explicitly clear that there is an inextricable connection between
access to reproductive health and opportunity to the labor market for women. There is a mutual
reinforcement between economic empowerment and the bodily form of autonomy.25 They
analyzed a number of economic outcomes for women facing different degrees of access to
reproductive health and arrived at the following. First, women residing in states with improved
reproductive health climate (for instance, expanded insurance for family planning), did have
higher earnings compared to those residing in states with limited access to reproductive health.
Second, those residing in states with better reproductive healthcare climates are highly likely to
work full time, thus earn more, get benefits, and have more promotion opportunities. Third,
access to healthcare and reproductive rights gives women the flexibility to move between jobs.26
Therefore, they concluded that certain economic outcomes are determined by women’s ability to
access the entire range of reproductive healthcare services.
In continuity the ability of women to have reproductive healthcare access contributes to
economic impacts that go beyond the immediate care costs. Economist Amartya produced the
capabilities approach, which describes how there are underlying economic processes that link a
woman’s bodily autonomy to improved economic opportunity.27 Philosopher Martha Nussbaum
builds on Amartya’s approach and write about capabilities that apply to gender equality.28
25 Kate Bahn et al, “Linking Reproductive Health Care Access to Labor Market Opportunities for Women,” The
Center for American Progress, Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/article/linking-reproductive-
health-care-access-labor-market-opportunities-women/
26 Ibid
27 Amartya Sen, “Capability and Wellbeing,” In Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, ed, The Quality of Life
(Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003).
28 Martha Nussbaum, “Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice,” Feminist Economics 9(2)
(2003): 33-59.
Literature Review 11
According to Nussbaum, capabilities are the actions that people can do and become. She
mentions the term known as “central human capabilities,” in other words, bodily integrity. She
defines bodily integrity as being capable of moving from one place to another freely, be safe
from all forms of violence, and be able to choose on matters dealing with reproduction.29
Therefore, the right to abortion is not about legalizing the procedure but also giving women
access to affordable abortion services so that those who choose this can gain them. Therefore,
this brings up a new point of view, where women require resources to access reproductive health
services.
Another framework that is similar to the capabilities approach, is referred to as the
reproductive justice framework. It brings together legal rights and the ability to exercise them.
The CAP defines reproductive justice as the political, social, and economic resources and powers
that women can have to make proper and healthy decisions regarding their bodies, families,
reproduction, sexuality, and the communities at large.30 Therefore, reproductive justice tackles
both economic inequality and systemic inequality. These affect how women can access
reproductive health services and exercise their reproductive rights. Women will definitely require
certain resources to access reproductive health services. There are those that will need respect
and cultural change while others will need support beyond legal services and policy change.
Apart from gaining meaningful employment, the ability to access reproductive health services
also increases the ability for women to invest in human capital, which will then increase their
earnings. Martha Bailey establishes that places, where younger women could access
29 Ibid.
30 Heidi Williamson, Kate Bahn, and Jamila Taylor, The Pillars of Equity: A Vision for Economic Security and
Reproductive Justice (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2017).
Literature Review 12
contraceptives, had an increase in wage premium (by 8%).31 Such findings implied that access to
contraceptives contributed to the closing of the gender wage gap.
Research that examines labor market statistics and reproductive health care access is that
by the Guttmacher Institute and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Their data
revealed that women in states with greater access to reproductive health services had higher
earnings, enhanced job opportunities, and also prospects for full-time employment.32 They
examined correlations between positive and negative indicators for access as well as the different
economic conditions the women faced.33 Examples of positive indicators for access to
reproductive health services include insurance coverage for family planning, infertility
treatments, contraceptives, and state-supported funding for abortion services. Examples of
negative indicators for access to reproductive healthcare services include TRAP laws, mandatory
ultrasounds, mandatory waiting periods, as well as restrictions placed on “late-term” abortions.34
A critical aspect of the labor market related to women’s employment is job lock. By
definition, this is when an individual is “locked” into a job because they do not have access to
employment opportunities or labor mobility to find other jobs that suit their skills. This is a
considerable concern in the labor market. According to researchers, employed workers find
themselves stuck in the jobs they have because they cannot easily find other jobs.35 This reduces
31 Martha J. Bailey and others, Early Legal Access: Laws and Policies Governing Contraceptive Access, 1960-
1980 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2011).
32 Guttmacher Institute, “Medicaid Family Planning Eligibility Expansions”, Available at
ttps://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/medicaid-family-planning-eligibility-expansions (last accessed
February 2023).
33 National Conference of State Legislatures, “State Laws Related to Insurance Coverage for Infertility Treatment”,
June 1, 2014, available at http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/insurance-coverage-for-infertility-laws.aspx#1.
34 Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, The US Gender Pay Gap in the 1990s: Slowing Convergence
(Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004).
35 Mike Konczal and Marshall Steinbaum, Declining Entrepreneurship, Labor Mobility, and Business Dynamism:
A Demand-Side Approach (New York: Roosevelt Institute, 2016).
Literature Review 13
their chances of going up the ladder scale or into the middle class. To this end, healthcare access
affects job mobility, for instance, lack of access to health insurance negatively impacts job
mobility. According to Ammar Farooq and Adriana Kugler, families with more Medicaid income
thresholds were highly likely to transition to better industries, occupations, and jobs.36 This is
even stronger for women as evidenced in more generous Medicaid states.
By now, it becomes clear that an investment in women’s reproductive health is a sure way
of ensuring sustainable development, more so economic development. Health investments not
only bring economic and social benefits, but they also save lives and improve people’s quality of
life.37 The only problem is that this is not being achieved in certain settings. Women in various
parts of the globe face diverse challenges trying to access reproductive health services.
According to Remme and others, women in places such as Ethiopia and India have lower rates of
immunization coverage and healthcare seeking mostly because these societies tend to prefer sons
over daughters.38 There are fewer women even in biomedical and medical research. Therefore,
this research points to a significant problem that appears prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, parts
of East Asia, and other poor societies.39 There is lack of enough research to contribute to the
knowledge on this aspect. It is a problem that researchers have identified as gender bias. It limits
women from realizing their right to health. Consequently, it exposes them to side effects from
treatment, less treatment, and misdiagnosis. It is a problem that is not only found in poor
countries but also the developed ones. According to research40, women in the United Kingdom
36 Ammar Farooq and Adriana Kugler, Beyond Job Lock: Impacts of Public Health Insurance on Occupational and
Industrial Mobility (Bonn, Germany: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 2016).
37 Michelle Remme and others, “Investing in the Health of Girls and Women: A Best Buy for Sustainable
Development,” BMJ, 269 (2020).
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Newman-Toker, David E., and others. “Missed Diagnosis of Stroke in the Emergency Department: A Cross-
Sectional Analysis of a Large Population-based Sample.” Diagnosis (Berl) 1 (2014):155-66.
Literature Review 14
and the United States are 50% and 25% more likely to be misdiagnosed for heart attack/stroke
than their male counterparts. Therefore, this is an area of this topic that might require further
research.
Shareen asks an important question – What connections should we focus on when it
comes to explicating the nexus between reproductive health and economic empowerment?41
According to her, do women engage more in the labor markets? Do healthier women with fewer
children invest their earnings in human capital? Does investment towards reproductive health
increase a woman’s capacity to not only earn but save more, therefore help alleviate poverty in
her family? These are the three questions that she seeks answers to. To the first question, she
establishes that improved reproductive health and lower fertility have an impact on labor force
participation. First, access to these services gives women the power to control the number and
timing of births.42 They can then redirect resources to work, train for jobs, or go to school.
Second, children that benefit from this will have improved futures. To the second question, she
finds out that women with better access and status to reproductive health tend to invest more of
their resources towards the health, productivity, and education of theirs and those of their
children.43 Access to information, development in maternal and child health, as well as access to
family planning matter in this aspect. It allows women to save and invest towards education and
such investments. To the third question, she establishes that improved reproductive health and
reduced fertility will contribute to not only asset accumulation but also income growth.44
Healthier people are stronger and thus can work more and be productive. They live longer, thus
41 Joshi, Shareen. “Reproductive Health and Economic Development: What Connections Should We Focus On?”
Population Reference Bureau, 2012.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
Literature Review 15
more opportunities to benefit from human capital investments. Altogether, she concludes that
improving reproductive health services: Creates opportunities for women to participate in the
labor markets; raises their capacities to be productive in the labor markets; increases their
incomes and levels of asset accumulation; increases incentives to invest towards human capital;
and increases their life expectancies.
Summary
In summary, most of the evidence reviewed above makes the connection between
reproductive health services and improved economic activity. The main research question was:
How does access to reproductive health services (family planning services, birth control,
abortion) impact women’s economic empowerment? The dependent variable (DV) to
demonstrate economic empowerment is employment status. There is evidence to show that
indeed, reproductive health services positively impact women’s economic empowerment. At the
very least, an improvement in women’s reproductive health will improve their economic
empowerment. Access to abortion services will reduce fertility, women will have less children,
thereby increasing their participation in the labor force. Expanding women’s use of
contraceptives will improve their education, agency, and inclusion in the labor force. Reducing
adolescent childbearing will increase the likelihood of girls/women completing school and
participating in the formal labor market later on. In many areas investigated, marriage in the
early years is connected to reduced empowerment, agency, as well as educational attainment. As
well, having longer birth intervals and fewer children will increase the participation of women in
the labor market. The finding is that when women have more time between the birth of children,
they will be able to work and take care of the children.
Literature Review 16
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Asaolu, Ibitola and others. “Association between Measures of Women’s Empowerment and Use
of Modern Contraceptives: An Analysis of Nigeria’s Demographic and Health Surveys.”
Frontiers in Public Health, 4, 2017.
Bahn, Kate et al. “Linking Reproductive Health Care Access to Labor Market Opportunities for
Women.” The Center for American Progress. Available at:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/linking-reproductive-health-care-access-labor-
market-opportunities-women/
Bailey, Martha J., and others. Early Legal Access: Laws and Policies Governing Contraceptive
Access, 1960-1980. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2011.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Women’s Economic Empowerment: Our Approach.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/equal-is-greater/our-approach/#:~:text=We%20define
Literature Review 17
%20women's%20economic%20empowerment,control%20and%20benefit%20from
%20economic
Blau, Francine D. and Lawrence M. Kahn. The US Gender Pay Gap in the 1990s: Slowing
Convergence. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004.
Farooq, Ammar, and Adriana Kugler. Beyond Job Lock: Impacts of Public Health Insurance on
Occupational and Industrial Mobility. Bonn, Germany: IZA Institute of Labor
Economics, 2016.
Finlay, Jocelyn E. “Women’s Reproductive Health and Economic Activity.” Harvard Review,
2020.
Finlay, Jocelyn E., and Marlene Lee. “Identifying Causal Effects of Reproductive Health
Improvements on Women’s Economic Empowerment through the Population Poverty
Research Initiative. The Milbank Quarterly, 96(2) (2018): 300-322.
Gammage, Sarah, Shareen Joshi, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers. “The Intersection of
Women’s Economic and Reproductive Empowerment. Feminist Economics 26(1) (2020):
1-22.
Gammage, Sarah and Dana Stefow. “Opinion: Decent Work for Women Calls for Sexual and
Reproductive Rights”. Devex, 25 October 2019. Available at
https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-decent-work-for-women-calls-for-sexual-and-
reproductive-rights-95859
Greenwood AM, et al. “Prospective Survey of the Outcome of Pregnancy in a Rural Area of the
Gambia.” Bull World Health Organ 65(5) 1987:635–43.
Literature Review 18
Guttmacher Institute. “Medicaid Family Planning Eligibility Expansions”. Available at
ttps://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/medicaid-family-planning-eligibility-
expansions (last accessed February 2023).
Heera, KC and others. “Women’s Empowerment for Abortion and Family Planning Decision
Making among Marginalized Women: A Mixed Method Study. Reproductive Health,
18(28) (2021).
Joshi, Shareen. “Reproductive Health and Economic Development: What Connections Should
We Focus On?” Population Reference Bureau, 2012.
Konczal, Mike and Marshall Steinbaum. Declining Entrepreneurship, Labor Mobility, and
Business Dynamism: A Demand-Side Approach. New York: Roosevelt Institute, 2016.
Lee, Marlene. The Effect of Reproductive Health Improvements on Women’s Economic
Empowerment: A Review through the Population and Poverty (PopPov) lens. Population
Reference Bureau, 2017.
National Conference of State Legislatures. “State Laws Related to Insurance Coverage for
Infertility Treatment”, June 1, 2014. Available at
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/insurance-coverage-for-infertility-laws.aspx#1.
Newman-Toker, David E. and others. “Missed Diagnosis of Stroke in the Emergency
Department: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of a Large Population-based
Sample.” Diagnosis (Berl) 1 (2014):155-66.
Nussbaum, Martha. “Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice”.
Feminist Economics 9(2) (2003): 33-59.
Literature Review 19
Onarheim, Kristine, Johanne Helene, and David Bloom. “Economic Benefits of Investing in
Women’s Health: A Systematic Review.” PLoS One 11(3) (2016): e0150120.
Remme, Michelle and others. “Investing in the Health of Girls and Women: A Best Buy for
Sustainable Development.” BMJ, 269 (2020).
Sen, Amartya. “Capability and Wellbeing.” In Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, ed. The
Quality of Life. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003.
Tinker, Anne. Safe Motherhood as a Social and Economic Investment: Technical Consultation
on Safe Motherhood. Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1997.
UNHCR. Sexual and Reproductive Health. https://www.unhcr.org/reproductive-health.html
Vizheh, Maryam and others. “Women Empowerment in Reproductive Health: A Systematic
Review of Measurement Properties.” BMC Women’s Health, 21(424) (2021).
Williamson, Heidi, Kate Bahn, and Jamila Taylor. The Pillars of Equity: A Vision for Economic
Security and Reproductive Justice. Washington: Center for American Progress, 2017.
