Abstract
Women’s empowerment is one of the key objectives of sustainable development. Despite efforts made by countries, women’s empowerment, particularly in its political dimension, continues to face significant challenges that can directly affect income levels and income distribution. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate the impact of women’s political empowerment indicators on income inequality in Iran. This descriptive-analytical and applied research was conducted at the national level using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag econometric method over the period 1990–2023 in Iran. Required data were extracted from the Varieties of Democracy database and the World Bank, and the study models were estimated in Eviews 13 software. The results revealed that the Women’s Political Empowerment Index, as well as its constituent indicators such as the Women’s Civil Liberties Index, and the Women’s Political Participation Index have a significant negative effect on income inequality in Iran. Therefore, policies aimed at enhancing women’s political rights and civil liberties, as well as increasing women’s formal and informal political participation, are recommended to strengthen women’s political empowerment and ultimately reduce income inequality in Iran. .