Do educational inequalities between marital partners influence the empowerment of educated women in ECOWAS?

In an environment where the question of women’s empowerment is a burning issue and where inequalities against women in education persist even though they are increasingly educated, it made sense to study the effect of educational inequalities between marital partners on women’s empowerment. Thus, using the latest rounds of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) women’s file from the four major West African economies including Nigeria (2013), Côte d’Ivoire (2011–12), Ghana (2014) and Senegal (2017), and then using a combination of internal and external instruments to better address issues related to the endogeneity of variables, we show that strong gender disparities in education negatively influence women’s financial and non-financial empowerment. The former is seen as the power of women to make decisions about spending their own and their spouse’s income and major household purchases. The second is the woman’s power to decide on health-related expenses and visits to relatives. Several other socio-demographic variables were likely to influence women’s empowerment. These include the woman’s household social status, age, labour market participation and religion.