Factors Affecting the Empowerment of Women Elites (Case Study: Women Representatives in Iranian Parliament)

‘Political empowerment’ is an opportunity for a large number of citizens to address political affairs; one of its most important indicators is the increase in ‘political participation’ at decision-making level. The present paper aims to answer the general question that what is the empowerment of women in the field of politics and by what contextual variables it is formed. The statistical population of this research is elite women in the field of politics. The methodology is based on using quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques and semi-structured interview technique in collecting data and texts of interviews. In order to organize the extracted data and present final model, MaxCoD data quality analysis software has been used. According to research findings, political empowerment has two main dimensions of ‘political participation and activism’ and ‘political elitism’, and women elites in the path of empowerment are affected by four individual, family, political and social settings, among which, family environment has the most impact on these women and their abilities. After that, the political environment affects the formation and extent of empowerment of these women. The researcher has identified 18 categories of first and second rates, and 522 semantic terms and used them in presenting a field-based theoretical model.