Geography
Maryam Ghasemi; Lida Alizadeh; Elham Ghandehari
Abstract
Empowerment is the linking point between development and women which is closely connected to continuous improvement, competency enhancement, behavioral changes, and development of women’s performance. It is considered as a part of establishing the concept of development. As the focal point in the ...
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Empowerment is the linking point between development and women which is closely connected to continuous improvement, competency enhancement, behavioral changes, and development of women’s performance. It is considered as a part of establishing the concept of development. As the focal point in the area of empowerment lies within women’s ability to control their future (psychological empowerment), the present study seeks to identify and prioritize various approaches for psychological empowerment of women in rural areas. The descriptive-analytical method was used in this applied-developmental study. Data have been collected using documents and field studies. The data were then analyzed using SWOT-QSPM by strategic management tools. In this study, 142 women from the rural areas of Torghabeh and Binaloud County voluntarily participated to fill out the questionnaires. Given the final scores of IFE=1.79 and EFE=2.60 in SWOT matrix, defensive strategies (minimum-minimum) were identified as optimal for psychological empowerment of women in rural areas. Among the ten strategies outlined using the QAPM (Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix), the most important strategy was “the identification of restrictive and facilitative factors for psychological empowerment of women in rural areas. The strategy attempts to mitigate the following obstacles”, with a score of 1.176; the second and third strategies with scores of 0.256 and 0.219 were “holding various educational workshops in line with psychological empowerment of women in rural areas”, and “encouraging women in rural areas to form cooperatives as well as various NGOs for women and supporting them”, respectively.
