Title: The Association of Women’s Empowerment Dimensions and Antenatal Care Utilization
in Ethiopia; Facility Based Cross-Sectional Study
Version: 2 Date: 10 Mar 2025
Reviewer's report:
"PEER REVIEWER ASSESSMENTS:
OBJECTIVE - Full research articles: is there a clear objective that addresses one or several
testable research questions? (Brief or other article types: is there a clear objective?)
Yes - there is a clear objective
DESIGN - Is the current approach (including controls and analysis protocols) appropriate for
the objective?
Not sure - key details are missing from the manuscript
EXECUTION - Are the experiments and analyses performed with sufficient technical rigor to
allow confidence in the results?
Yes - experiments and analyses were performed appropriately
STATISTICS - Is the use of statistics in the manuscript appropriate?
Yes - appropriate statistical analyses have been used in the study
INTERPRETATION - Is the current interpretation/discussion of the results reasonable and not
overstated?
No - there are major issues
OVERALL MANUSCRIPT POTENTIAL - Has the author addressed your concerns sufficiently
for you to now recommend the work as a technically sound contribution? If not, can further
revisions be made to make the work technically sound?
Maybe - with major revisions
PEER REVIEWER COMMENTS:
GENERAL COMMENTS: I appreciate the opportunity to review the revised manuscript
exploring the association of empowerment with antenatal care utilization. I commend the authors
for their attention to the reviewers comments. It appears that the authors have made many edits
to the presentation of the results. However, for the manuscript to be suitable for publication
much more needs to be done to improve the writing. I will elaborate further in the next portion
of this review
REQUESTED REVISIONS:
Revise “women empowerment” to either “empowerment of women” or “women’s
empowerment” for grammatical correctness
Use Low-Middle Income Countries rather than developing countries
In the Abstract:
Which leads women to mortality and morbidity by inhibiting them from determinant maternal
care like antenatal care. – not a complete sentence
What is determinant maternal care?
In the methods – you don’t need to include that the collected data were entered…
What you do need to include is more about who the participants were rather that just ‘mothers”
– were they pregnant? Postnatal? And what country?
Throughout the paper:
Please review the references. For example reference one should not be used as a citation for the
first sentence of the introduction. Direct quotes such as this: it is about the process by which
those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life choices acquire such ability through
agency, resource, and achievement need to be clearly marked as quotes
For the discussion section  you do not need to restate the statistical data – for example The
findings of this study show the majority of mothers contact health care providers for ANC at
least four times during their pregnancy [62.1% (95% CI): 56.4%, 67.6].
While the discussion is improved, please edit the writing to read more as a discussion rather
than individual comparisons of your findings to other studies. An example of where this was
done well is: “This  may be explained by the fact that  labor work participation provides a
chance to generate income to seek health care and widen their social network and increase their
awareness.”
Conclusion – please redo the conclusion – read examples from similar publications
There is much English language editing that needs to occur
And please be careful about run-on sentences such as the one beginning with “A positive
statistically significant correlation”
ADDITIONAL REQUESTS/SUGGESTIONS:
There is much work that needs to occur with English language editing before this is ready for
publication"