Rural womens empowerment modeling in Sari Township

ABSTRACT: The overall aim of this research was modeling the rural womenʹs empowerment in Sari Township. To achieve this aim, womenʹs empowerment indicators and affecting factors on womenʹs empowerment were identified in Sari Township. The statistical population included 111124 women living in the rural areas of Sari Township. Women were selected through stratified random sampling technique. The sample size was determined using Cochran’s formula. A sample of 293 women were taken randomly. Research methodology applied in this study was a combination of descriptive-analytical and quantitative methods. Also cronbach’s alpha was 0.85. The average age of women in rural areas was 46.33 years and 86.3 percent of rural women in Sari had more than 11 years experience of working in agriculture sector. The average family size was 4 per family and 65 percent had no savings. Also, 62 percent of the womenʹs empowerment variance in rural areas of sari is determined by six factors of communication, womenʹs loan source, methods and approaches, obstacles, solutions and education. The most effective factor on womenʹs empowerment in rural areas of Sari was womenʹs loan source with path coefficient of 0.423. Other rural women were the most important rural womenʹs loan source. The most useful method from the rural womenʹs perspective was group methods such as training workshops on processing agricultural products. The major Obstacle to rural womenʹs empowerment was women’s distrust to each other and the main solution to cope was to give loans and credits to rural women.