Women’s empowerment and family poverty in the Tawhidi epistemological approach

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the socio-economic factors that will affect women’s empowerment from an Islamic perspective (the Tawhidi epistemological approach) and the impact of women’s empowerment on reducing family poverty. Design/methodology/approach Using a quantitative approach to see the relationship between research variables with structural equation model-partial least squares as the analysis tool. Findings In general, socio-economic variables had direct and indirect effects on reducing family poverty. In addition, the variable of women’s empowerment in an Islamic perspective can strengthen the influence of socio-economic variables on the alleviation of family poverty. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this research lies in the use of religiosity as an indicator with some constraints and the inclusion of all the necessary dimensions of a Muslim family. Additionally, because of the scope of the present research, the results may not be applicable in different areas, especially countries with distinctive characteristics such as having Muslims as the major population. On the other hand, the results of this research may provide comprehensive indicators of empowered Muslim women which enable the correlation between the socio-economic factors and women’s empowerment and how women’s empowerment can contribute to the alleviation of family poverty from the perspective of Islam. Originality/value This research provides new insights into the variable of women’s empowerment measured using the Islamic paradigm (Tawhidi epistemology) and includes religiosity as a variable that directly and indirectly influences the reduction of family poverty.