Qualitative meta-analysis of two decades of research on empowerment of rural and urban women in Iran

The present study attempts to qualitative analysis of rural and urban women empowerment studies. Accordingly, in the first step, all scientific and research articles were extracted from the scientific information database of ACECR (SID) and the Noor specialized magazines website (Noormags). The search was conducted during the period 1996-2016 with the keyword empowerment which led to the identification of 60 papers. Subsequently, forty-two articles that including the words "rural women" or "urban women" in the title, abstract, or keywords were selected for extraction of data and further study. According to the findings of the present study, studies in this area have two general orientations, some of them seeking theoretical analysis and providing interventional models for the empowerment of the target groups. Others have looked at the empowerment process of women empirically, taking into account different samples of rural and urban women. Overall, factors such as education, employment, social skills, self- confidence, self- worth and public education have been factors influencing the empowerment of rural and urban women.