Empowerment of Women for Health Development: A Global Perspective

This paper reviews two interrelated issues that affect health status and quality of life (QOL) in populations from a global perspective with special reference to women. These are: (1) the limits of conventional economic development (EDev) and health system reform (HSR) strategies in promoting health status and QOL for all. The first part of the paper reviews this issue; and (2) the importance of empowerment of women, concurrently with economic development (EDev) and health systems reform (HSR), for reducing persistent disparities in health and QOL across gender and ethnic groups. The second part of this paper reviews effective models and methods of women's empowerment movements and implications for promoting health and QOL in underserved and disadvantaged communities. This paper is based upon our on-going research on empowerment of women and mothers (WAM) for health promotion that grew from an earlier research project awarded to the senior author as an integral part of his Kellogg International Fellowship Program in Health (KIFPH) administered by the Michigan State University.