A Bibliometric Analysis of Women’s Empowerment Studies Post Sustainable Development Goal Adoption Periods (2015–2022)

Abstract

Women’s empowerment has been identified as one of the key tools to ensure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and an effective means to long-term economic growth and success. Given its importance, this article presents a bibliometric analysis of publications that focus on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, which aims to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. In developing this research, Web of Science databases were used to search for relevant articles, and a final sample of 1095 publications was extracted for this purpose. The findings of this study indicate that studies on women’s empowerment within the Sustainable Development Goals are gaining importance in both the developed and developing countries of the world. The results further revealed that there has been significant growth in scientific production on this topic, with the first quantum leap and highest production occurring in 2017 and 2021, respectively. Based on the co-occurrence of keywords, important terms such as autonomy, power, education, and employment were found to be relevant to this topic. In conclusion, this study provides an insight into the reality of scientific production on women’s empowerment topics following the adoption of the SDGs, with recommendations for its future development and support for policymakers in initiating relevant policies for women’s empowerment.