Analyzing the relation of welfare systems with Women's Economic Empowerment

Empowerment is a process that if exists in women lives will bring them freedom and elevates their status. The formation process of women's empowerment requires preconditions. One of the things that most experts in this field have stressed is the role of "resources". But resources do not only focus on women's economic capital. Literature on empowerment considers laws and policies as reliable resources that can improve status of women. In present study entitled “Analyzing the relation of welfare systems with Women's Economic Empowerment", "social policy" is taken as a factor affecting women's empowerment in variety of welfare systems. The effort has been to compare women economic empowerment among liberal, conservative and social democrat welfare systems in order to understand which of these policies has been more successful in bringing better situation for women in society. In doing so this study analyses data of gender gap (2014) from World Labor Organization using secondary analysis and studies women economic empowerment indicators in 18 selected countries based on three aforementioned welfare systems. Findings show that difference in socio-welfare policies in welfare states has created uneven economic empowerment for women in a way that in conservative systems women are weaker than liberal or social democrat systems.