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Objectives: Nowadays, governments put citizens in their first priority in order to protect their stability. Undoubtedly, citizen empowerment is one of the most important duties of government. Empowerment of women as half of the population with extra influence on culture and human development has been concentrated. Scholars indicate empowerment of women have five stages: welfare, access, consciousness, participation, and control. Head-of-household women are important section of citizens. In order to empower citizens, paying attention to them has great importance. It seems that head-of-household women have too many problems that obstruct them to access a sustainable development. They have characteristics that can be used to human development because they use their income to improve family’s nutrition, welfare, and education. So, increasing their income seems to have direct and positive impact on family’s situation. In this article we have tried to identify factors that impact on empowerment of head-of-household women, and prepare a guideline for whom responsible for them. Method: Current research is a survey. Training, skill learning, income-earning plans, giving stock, giving loan and noncash aids were independent variables and empowerment was dependent one. Random sampling was used and 240 questionnaires were completed by women in Tehran and Karaj that received help from Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and Welfare Organization and also Tehran municipality. To determine validity of scale we took advantages of construct validity and factor analysis. The reliability index of Chronbach’s alpha was 0.92 for head-of-household women empowerment and 0.89 for independent factors. Spearman correlation and structural equations model was used for statistical analysis. Findings: There was a correlation between independent variables and empowerment and also among independent variables, meaning that strengthening one of them will improve the others. Training and income-earning plans had the most impact on empowerment of head-of-household women. Causality model indicates that training and income-earning plans had positive impacts for our participants. Conclusion: Because of having several roles, head-of-household women don’t have time for education and usually are less educated than other women. So, training has positive effect on their family. As head-of-household women most big problem usually is economic, so any solution to reduce this problem will be very helpful. Contrary to scholars’ expectations, other hypotheses were rejected. We think the loan’s amount was insufficient and it takes too much time to receive it. Furthermore, a bailsman was needed for receiving loan. Accessing to resource is a key factor of empowering head-of-household women, so noncash aids seemed to be effective. But it was rejected too. Talking with head-ofhousehold women showed that the women’ honor was not considered when giving them noncash aids. Also the notification of giving these aids was not suitable and because of that, a hostile climate was raised there.

Keywords: head-of-household women, empowerment, public education, skill learning, income-earning plan

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