Drawing on the World Bank’s Moving Out of Poverty dataset, this study explores the life stories of 125 women who have lived through violent political conflict in four middle-income countries. The report attempts to qualitatively assess the factors shaping women’s empowerment and community recovery after conflict in order to support broad recommendations for interventions in the post-conflict period.

Two key findings emerged. First, the women living in communities directly affected by violent political conflict rated more highly on empowerment measures than the women living in communities that did not experience conflict. Second, once the violence drew to a close, the set of conflict-affected communities that experienced the most rapid recovery and poverty reduction were also characterized by more empowered women than the set of conflict-affected communities with lower rates of poverty reduction.