Women's Empowerment in Pakistan–Definitions and Enabling and Disenabling Factors: A Secondary Data Analysis

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore Pakistani women's definition of women's empowerment, including its enabling and disenabling factors. Through understanding empowerment, interventions may be developed for women to be empowered. Design: Transcriptions of 35 interviews from a previous study were reanalyzed through secondary data analysis. Findings/Results: The themes of economic stability, social acceptability, educational achievement, and family harmony emerged for the concept of definition of empowerment. Themes for enabling factors were strength of personality and openness of mind. Disenabling factors had sociocultural influences, religious misinterpretations, and dominant ideology as themes. Discussion/Conclusions: Pakistani women hold on to their customs, traditions, and religion tenaciously. The views of empowerment leading to the themes were expressed as true for their lives.