A nation’s population is usually almost divided evenly between males and females however; the sharing
of power, wealth, influence, employment etc. has never been close to equality. Poverty has a woman face
since 70% of people in poverty are women. The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals that
involve halving extreme poverty has the target date as 2015. The study assesses effort at women
empowerment and poverty alleviation in Lagos. The study employed primary and secondary data which
were obtained through the administration of structured questionnaire and the revision of exiting relevant
literature, respectively. Data was collected from 180 respondents across six centres in Lagos. The study
found that the women poverty alleviation programme is working towards the eradication of extreme
poverty and hunger, the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women in Lagos. The
programme has contributed immensely towards alleviating poverty by financially empowering the
women. However some of its contributions have not had the desired impact due to internal and external
constraints including: inadequate and untimely release of funds by the government;
inadequate/inappropriate staffing; inability to monitor the impact cum performance of beneficiaries due to
logistics problems; massive unemployment among women. The study recommends that institutional
arrangements to enhance the status of women and increase their access to education should be
strengthened.