Current study recognized that in tribal Pashtun belt women are facing social, political, economic, and educational discriminations in everyday life. Further, the study also deduced from the review of existing literature that both culture and religion are playing a significant part in restricting women’s empowerment. However, the study found a gap in the existing literature that literature has not properly address a fundamental question in this regard that is “Between culture and religion which factor is playing more influencing role in restricting women empowerment, generally in Pakistan, and specifically in tribal areas. Therefore, this study has turned its focus on this fundamental question. We applied qualitative methods on five fundamental dimensions of women’s empowerment such as economic empowerment, social empowerment, educational empowerment, political empowerment, and decision-making power to address the research problem in detailed manner. Our result findings implied that local women perceived that both culture and religious factors are playing a role in impeding women’s empowerment but the role of local culture is more dominant in this regard. Based on research findings this study endorses three major recommendations: (1) women empowerment will not be achieved without improving education, (2) for protecting women rights legislation and policy making is necessary but not sufficient without functional enforcement those policies and laws, (3) engaging local actors such as indigenous sociocultural, political and religious leaders is mandatory for creating women empowerment awareness. Supervisor:- Dr. Usman Ahmad