Women's Empowerment and Enterprise Dynamism in the Philippines: A WDI-Based Index and Time-Series Evidence (2006–2022)

This study tests whether women’s empowerment is associated with formal enterprise dynamism in the Philippines using annual World Development Indicators (WDI) data from 2006–2022 (N = 17). Enterprise dynamism is measured by new business density (new limited-liability firm registrations per 1,000 working-age people). Women’s empowerment is operationalized as a composite Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) built from seven WDI indicators capturing women’s economic participation and job quality, autonomy-related constraints, and institutional inclusion (constraint indicators reverse-coded). Using OLS time-series regression with HAC/Newey–West standard errors, WEI is positively associated with new business density in baseline models (β = 0.061, p < .01) and remains positive after conditioning on log GDP per capita and trade openness (β = 0.159, p < .01). Controlling for pandemic disruption yields a large negative 2020 shock (β = −0.089, p < .01) while the WEI association remains positive (β = 0.132, p < .05). Measurement robustness using a PCA-based WEI preserves a positive coefficient (β = 0.123, p < .10), whereas a one-year lag specification provides no evidence of delayed effects (β = 0.002, p = .962; N = 16). Overall, empowerment conditions co-move positively with formal firm entry in the Philippines, while causal interpretation remains limited by the single-country observational design.