This article shows how the struggle for women's rights can be understood as a struggle for recognition and justice. It starts reviewing the liberal theories of distributive justice and from there it considers the concepts of recognition and empowerment, to demonstrate how to talk of women's empowerment it is necessary to have a complex vision of the problem that recognizes the different shades, result of the imbrication of oppressions that they are subjected to. Also, since economic models of development can be a source of exclusion and oppression for poor women, it is important to analyze the topics of development and poverty.