The paper reviews the impact of commercialisation of the village economies and globalisation of the national economy on women's ‘opportunity spectrum’ and explores their empowering and disempowering features for women. Conclusions are based on review of: (a) macro-level available information on Nepal’s developments in the last 15–20 years and (b) in-depth analysis of two village level surveys through time (1977–78 and 2004–05) and 100 factory workers from Kathmandu. The paper concludes that, although development programs in rural areas have increased women's role in domestic arena and visibility in community affairs, much deeper interventions are needed in patriarchal ideology and structures to empower them in the full sense. Secondly, while women's move to the factory work in export industries does provide her access to at least some income and increases her political consciousness, old social discriminatory structures and international competition combine to keep both poor women and men in extremely exploitative conditions, which are more dis- empowering than empowering