Despite cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement to develop the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), implementation and monitoring have been limited in the public and private sectors. These limitations are particularly true of SDG5 to "achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls," with variable political commitments and low data availability across countries. In this study, we use qualitative analysis of 21 interviews with pan-Asian stakeholders and national stakeholders from government, civil society, and academic sectors across seven Asian countries to understand their conceptualizations of women’s empowerment and challenges related to measuring women’s empowerment at the national level. Results focus on stakeholders’ conceptualization of empowerment, empowerment processes, contextual factors influencing empowerment, and how these can be measured. Respondents emphasized the multidimensional aspects of empowerment, with specific attention to tangible aspects of economic empowerment, infrastructure and assets, as well as psychological empowerment as antecedent to voice, action, and full participation in communities and society. Respondents also identified institutional, reputational, and technical factors affecting measurement of empowerment at the national level and the challenges of coordinating across government agencies, with civil society, and with international entities. Addressing institutional, reputational, and technical barriers to collecting data on women’s empowerment requires collaboration across government agencies and with external organizations. Data gaps in women’s empowerment are driven not only by deficiencies in technical capacity to collect, analyze, and use women’s empowerment data, but also by intranational and international institutional tensions related to who controls the national narrative on women’s empowerment. Improving data collection on women’s empowerment requires attention to the dimensions that are salient to national stakeholders and early efforts to ensure buy-in by the national offices that may prioritize some SDGs over others in the context of limited resources and questions about national image
