Coping Engagement as the Pathway from Psychological Empowerment to Life Satisfaction: A Mediation and Moderation Study Among Women in Northern Peru

Psychological empowerment is associated with women's well-being, yet how it translates into life satisfaction in high-informality Latin American settings remains untested — as does whether empowerment must cross a threshold before any benefit appears. We tested a moderated mediation model with 251 women aged 18–44 from three northern Peruvian regions using PLS-SEM with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Coping engagement fully mediated the empowerment–life satisfaction relationship (indirect β = .134, 95% CI [.065, .213]; VAF = 87.6%; R²[engagement] = .070, R² [life satisfaction] = .285); the direct path was non-significant (β = .019, p = .754). In exploratory threshold analyses, empowerment predicted life satisfaction only above a normative cut-point (≥136; β = .382, p < .001) below it, the association was flat (β = .047, p = .547). Age moderated the engagement–satisfaction link (β = −.239, p = .031), with stronger effects among younger women; motherhood amplified the negative impact of disengagement on satisfaction (β = −.272, p = .021). Model fit was good (SRMR = .078, at threshold; NFI = .942). Engagement is the mechanism that converts empowerment into well-being, but it only activates once empowerment is high. Incremental, single-dimension programs are unlikely to shift life satisfaction. Tailored design for mothers and younger women is warranted.