Abstract
The ongoing women's poverty and gender discrimination, owing to various cultural and historical constraints on their socio-economic status and advancement, has raised different approaches in the literature, namely women's empowerment. Within a conceptual framework of poverty and empowerment this paper intends to probe into different facets of the empowerment of women-headed households, as one of the most important groups subjected highly to poverty risk, in the city of Tehran.
The study reveals that women's individual features (characteristics) have a significant effect on their poverty. In addition, women's poverty has multiple dimensions: economic, social and psychological, so, they should be taken into account in any gender and poverty analysis. According to the findings, in spite of some measures and efforts by different poverty-alleviating organizations in the framework of assistance schemes or projects, yet women's empowerment needs a long way to be realized. The reason for this, the paper argues, lies in characteristics of the approach(es) dominating these efforts, their low level quantity as well as women's poor capability. The paper concludes that in order to eliminate or alleviate women's poverty and gender inequality, and change women's socio-economic status, a structural development is necessary.
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