Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Women’s empowerment and child growth faltering in Ethiopia: evidence
from the Demographic and Health Survey.
Version: 
0 
Date: 
13 Dec 2020
Reviewer's report:
Dear Sir 
Thank you to give me the opportunity to review the article entitled (Women's
empowerment and child growth faltering in Ethiopia: evidence from the
Demographic and Health Survey).
The authors found that attitude to violence, social independence, and decision-
making were the three domains of women's empowerment that were associated
with child growth faltering. They also concluded that empowering the women
clearly has a potential impact on decreasing stunting and underweight in a
rapidly developing country like Ethiopia. It is extremely important for
policymakers and health professionals to consider women's empowerment in this
unique context to improve nutritional outcomes for children and alleviate growth
faltering.
It is an interesting article. Authors used informative title and clear keywords.
In the introduction, authors identified the indicators to measure women's
empowerment, decision-making at the household and women's attitude towards
violence. However, the Survey-based Women's emPowERment (SWPER) index
also recommends including women's social independence, as an indicator of
women's empowerment. In addition, authors explained that there is a gap of
knowledge regarding the women's empowerment in Ethiopian and this explains
why their study was designed.
In the methodology section, authors mentioned the data source, outcome variable
and exposure variable (SWPER index, violence against women, social
independence, and decision-making scores). Also, authors mentioned the
statistical methods used to analyze their data and to get the study results. 
In the results section, authors presented the weighted descriptive statistics,
descriptive statistics of domains of women's empowerment and association of
women's empowerment and child growth faltering (supported by their tables and
supplementary tables).
In the discussion section, authors presented their findings and compared it with
other findings. In addition, they mentioned the strength and the limitations of the
study. 
Authors presented clear conclusion reflecting their results and they used relevant
references. 
Finally, the manuscript is an interesting one and I accept it for publication after
minor changes 
Minor change 
1. Ethical approval: I think it is better to mention this paragraph under the ethical
approval (The datasets used and/or analyzed during this study are approved by
ORC Macro Institutional and by Ethiopian ethical review board. It can be
accessed upon reasonable request from the DHS program website (available at:
http://dhsprogram.com)).
2, Page 13 reference number 38 missed (I think number 28 is wrong and should
be replace by 38) - Please, ask authors to revise this.
Please, see the attached PDF of the reviewed manuscript file.
Regards 
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Declaration of competing interests
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Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
Yes
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
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Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
Yes
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free
from apparent manipulation?
Yes