Extended Abstract
Introduction: Over the past decades, women have been more exposed to and sexual discrimination than men. This is because women did not have the capabilities and facilities needed to empower themselves and reduce poverty. Empowerment is essential for the empowerment of low-income people to achieve their rights. After 1937, business leaders all over the world followed gender equality through the principles of empowering women (Busingyea &  Kazooba, 2018). According to the World Bank reports, more than 66 percent of the world’s poor are women, while women all over the world always account for more than two-thirds of the workload, but they have earned only 10 percent of global income and only one percent of the world’s wealth. Capability and competence are the most important factors in obtaining employment opportunities and effective participation in economic and social development. Today, understanding and applying an empowerment strategy is a clear goal for promoting mental health of societies, and empowerment is a process through which individuals will have more control over decisions, lifestyles and activities that affect their lifestyles. Empowering the process of building and developing individual capacities can be achieved by looking at an active presence in shaping individual life and economic, social, and political factors. In the meantime, empowerment of female head of household can be regarded as an important factor for women’s advancement, reducing inequality and improving lifestyles.
In accordance with Clause T of Article 2 of the Sixth Development Plan, the development of the empowerment of female head of household and employment is one of the priorities and central issues, and the government is required to provide an annual employment coverage of 82,000 people provided by supportive institutions. Moreover, under Clause T of Article 80, the government is required to provide full implementation of the comprehensive empowerment plan for households headed by women in accordance with the laws and regulations of the Social Council.
Method: The present research is a quantitative and descriptive-analytical study. This research seeks to identify and prioritize the best ways to empower female-headed households with Fuzzy Delphi (F-DELPHI) and Network Analysis Process (NAP). Data collection tools were interviews and questionnaires. Data analysis was performed with Super Decision version 2.8 software. The setting of the study is the well-being office of the city of Savadkouh (Polesefid) and the period of time between August and November in the year 2018. 
The research community in the stage of identifying and determining ways of empowering female-headed households using the Fuzzy Delphi method includes 15 experts. Besides, in the next step (prioritizing ways to empower female-headed households) were based on the NAP process technique. The statistical population consisted of 12 experts. Due to the limited statistical population, sampling method was purposeful in this research. The validity of this research was tested using experts’ opinions and the reliability of the research was examined according to the Cronbach’s alpha Criterion. 
Findings: As described in the research methodology, this study has been conducted in two stages. In the first stage, after obtaining the ways of empowering female-headed households and conducting library studies and 15 interviews with the experts, the results were finally obtained at three levels of: individual, family and community. Then, a questionnaire was developed based on the results obtained from the previous step including 10 levels of significance (from 1 to 10). After obtaining appropriate reliability, in order to collect data, the 15 experts in the subject were asked about their opinions. 
In the next step, the questionnaire was designed to prioritize the solutions. According to the experts’ opinions, the NAP network was designed considering the three criteria of transformation, feasibility, and bearing low cost. Then, to investigate the relationship between criteria and options with each other and form a pairwise two-way comparison, the network was formed and the analysis started using Super Decision version 2.8 software. After calculating the incompatibility index, in the next step, the weighted super-matrix was extracted into infinity. Based on the results, the obtained solutions (with the final score obtained) in the order of priority are as follows: 1. promoting social health (0.147); 2. providing professional training (0.1332); 3.  providing life skills training (0.1312);  4. creating markets (0.1146);  5.  Rehabilitation (0.1133); 6. providing the facilities (0.0967);  7. providing insurance and social security services (0.0826); 8. providing necessary goods (0.0703); 9. allocating more funds for organizations to support women (0.0556) ; and 10. offering allowances to improve individual welfare (0.0548).
Discussion: The existence of barriers and constraints for changing the economic and social base of women is affected by cultural and legal factors, so efforts should be made to eradicate poverty among this group of women. These problems and barriers for female-headed households are far more than others. Empowering women is one of the most important components of sustainable development. Based on the prioritization of the experts’ opinions, it can be seen that empowerment of female-headed households in the first step involves providing grounds for their physical and mental health. After ensuring this issue, they should be provided with methods such as training, the creation of a specialist platform for work, etc. to help them by relying on these trainings and skills, to meet their needs, including economic, social, cultural needs, etc. In the final step, if a woman, due to certain circumstances, is not able to meet her needs in the way mentioned, should directly seek direct payment methods or a providing basic goods. Generally, the result of the implementation of this set of policies will enable, by activating the hidden capacities of the country, in addition to helping ourselves to excellence in the economic and social life, we can also increase the amount of production in the country. Regardless of improving the economic and livelihood status of female-headed households, implementation of these ways will increase mental health and self-esteem. Finally, as suggestions to future researchers, they can use fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making models to prioritize ways. Another suggestion that can be given for the development of this research is to examine the effectiveness of the empowerment ways before the implementation of the NAP model using the DEMATEL technique.
Ethical considerationsAuthors Contribution
All of four authors were involved in writing this article.
Financial Resources
In order to publish the article, it has not received direct or indirect financial support from any organization.
Following Principles of Research Ethics
All of data has gathered with participants’ prior consent, remaining anonymous. In addition, we have obeyed all of research principles including piracy, manipula-tion etc.