Survey of Barriers to Rural Women Economic Empowerment in Iran

Abstract

Women play an indispensable role in farming and in improving the quality of life in rural areas. Also rural women play a key role in agricultural sector production by working with full passion in production of crops right from the soil preparation till post harvest and food security activities in developing countries. In addition, for reaching development and progress goals of developing countries such as Iran, considering women rural ability promotion are vital. Also, the important role of women rural empowerment in promoting more agricultural productivity and development in rural areas is now widely recognized. The purpose of this study was identifying barriers to rural women economic empowerment. A descriptive–correlation survey approach was used in this study. The population consisted of women living in rural areas of Ardabil County. The questionnaire and interview were used for data collection in this study. The researcher developed the survey instrument. Validity of the instrument was established using a panel of experts. Reliability of the instrument for various questions varied from 0.83 to 0.86. Results showed that the most important barriers to rural women economic empowerment are: less skill of women, lack of men confidence to women, Sexuality, much busy to work at home, lack of employment opportunity to rural women, lack support of government from women entrepreneurship, lack of ability of talking in public. By factor analysis, factors for barriers to rural women economic empowerment were reduced to four main factors, named as individual-psychological, economic participation, infrastructure and social-institutional.