Is there Gender-Based Discrimination in Childhood Immunization in Ethiopia: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Feminists and their proponents underscore that females and males don’t have the same opportunity rather females are the victim of gender-based discrimination. There are pocket studies that reported fragmented evidences across different parts of Ethiopia related to the association between childhood immunization coverage and gender of children, therefore, this study has examined whether there is gender-based discrimination in childhood immunization coverage in Ethiopia and come up with concrete information at the national level. Articles for this study were retrieved through search engines such as PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CINHAL, HINARI portal, Google Scholar, and institutional repositories. Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-MAStARI) were used for the critical appraisal of the included articles. The data were extracted in the excel sheet considering the Adjusted Odd Ratio (AOR) reported. Then the authors transformed the data to STATA 14 for analysis. Heterogeneity across the studies was evaluated by the Q and the I 2 tests. The random-effects model analysis technique was applied to estimate the pooled estimates (AOR). Moreover, the subgroup analysis was conducted by region and year of publication. To examine publication bias, a funnel plot and Egger’s regression test were employed to see publication bias. Sensitivity analysis was also done to identify the impact of included studies. A total of 21 studies with 28,448 participants were included in the study. The pooled estimate of childhood immunization coverage for male children in Ethiopia was found to be 0.99 (95%CI; 0.89–1.09; I 2 = 54.4%; p