User fee policies and women’s empowerment : a systematic scoping review

User fee removal policies alone are not enough to improve women’s healthcare decision-making power. Comprehensive and multi-sectoral approaches are needed to bring sustainable change regarding women’s empowerment. A focus on “gender equitable access to healthcare” would serve to reconcile women’s empowerment and efforts to achieve universal health coverage. The article provides a synopsis of research that examined existing literature, with study settings in three low-income countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone) and two lower-middle countries (Kenya, India). Evidence suggests that user fee removal contributes to improving women’s capacity to make health decisions, but that the impact is limited