Empowerment is individual development based on one's own interests in attaining individual and social objectives. Women's empowerment involves action to upgrade the status of women through education, increasing awareness, literacy, and learning how to defend oneself. In the process of empowerment, by increasing women's awareness regarding their inner requirements and desires, the audacity to reach goals and their abilities to realize these objectives are also fructified. Women's empowerment for development was addressed in recent decades based on the opinions of feminists and with reliance on Third World countries
by international organizations, and the Beijing Declaration in 1995 provided an agenda for women's empowerment in which gender equality and women's empowerment for development were proposed. The indicators of women's empowerment included: women's legal issues, educational-academic progress, opportunity for economic participation-employment, social-cultural status, and the extent of presence in positions of power. In Iran, too, women becoming empowered was a process that began from the Constitutionalism (Mashrūṭeh) era and has continued until now, and today, women becoming empowered has turned into a concern not only for women but for governments. The purpose of the present research is to examine the grounds for women's empowerment in the programs of post-Islamic Revolution governments using the descriptive-analytical method and the theoretical views of Sara Longwe. The question of the present research is: "The obstacles and challenges to women's empowerment in the Islamic Republic of Iran are the effects of what conditions and factors?". The hypothesis that was tested in response to this question is that "The obstacles to women's empowerment in Iran after the Revolution are effects of social conditions and also effects of legal conditions." The social obstacles to women's empowerment in Iranian society were identified as infrastructural obstacles, and the legal obstacles were identified as superstructural obstacles to women's empowerment in Iranian society. In fact, the synergy of the social and legal sectors is the serious challenge to the empowerment of Iranian women in the post-Revolution era.