Two tier development: Women in Africa

In this article, we identify African countries with a similar development level based on selected women’s development indicators. To assess the development levels we used the following indicators: i) economic participation and opportunity, ii) leadership, iii) educational attainment, iv) health and survival, v) rights and norms related indicators, vi) childbearing, vii) childcare, and viii) political empowerment. The methodologies applied in this study include principal component analysis and cluster analysis. We test two hypotheses concerning the relative development of women throughout the continent of Africa. The first hypothesis testes that whether African countries could be divided into core and periphery groups based on their achievement in terms of women’s relative development. The second hypothesis testes if the North African countries are in a different position in terms of women’s development in comparison to their Sub-Saharan counterparts. While empirical results support the first hypothesis, the results did not support the second hypothesis.We argue that Core countries are in a better situation in terms of women’s relative development than that of the periphery countries. Both these two groups include countries from North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa, thus contesting the idea that women in North-African countries might fare well than the women in the south of the Sahara. While we acknowledge the intra-group diversities of communities, women and countries throughout Africa, the originality of this article is that it shows proximity of the development situation of women in comparison to women, instead of men. The article, however, does not aim to explain the reasons behind the similarities or differences in levels of development between the core and periphery countries.