A Viewpoint toward Empowering and Entrepreneurship of Rural Women in Iran: Situations and Problems

Year 2018, Volume: 1 Issue: 2, 37 - 51, 01.07.2018

Farhood Golmohammadı

Abstract

Two main goals of
sustainable development are increasing capabilities of human race and expansion
of people choices in their lives. Despite the increasing awareness of the great
potentials of women in development, women all over developing countries still face
the age-old problems of neglect, inequality, lack of access to productive
resources and dependency on men. It is sad to note that despite the level of
civilization in the world, gender inequality and disparities between men and
women are still prominent in many developing countries. Empowerment is a
process in each woman’s life but is also a process occurring over time in a
society. Rural women cooperatives are the main local based organizations for
empowering female gender in villages of Iran that had very successful
performances during last two decades. In this article, author investigated
various aspects of empowerment rural women by these cooperatives in
South-Khorasan province, east of Iran, with emphasizing on their current
empowerment situations and problems and finally present approaches for
bettering them. For achieving this purpose, after a wide literature review in
related contexts in world and Iran, author did a broad field research work
during 2014 – 2016 on rural women cooperatives of South Khorasan province. The
research design used for this study was a descriptive-analytical method. The
population for the study consisted of the managers and the board of directors
of these rural women cooperatives in 2014 – 2016 (about 120 rural women). Data
gathering method in this study was census. Main instrument for data collection
was questionnaire. In addition, qualitative research methods of data collection
such as participation, discussion, interviewing, documentations and observation
were been used. In the end, presented ways and approaches that we must do for
strengthening empowerment of rural women.

Keywords

Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, Rural Women, Cooperatives, Situations, Problems, Iran

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