Rural Development
Fatemeh Movahdian; Saeed Gholamrezai; Fatemeh Rahimi-Feyzabad
Abstract
Rural women's employment can be one of the ways to generate income, reduce the pressure on resources, and as a result, rural development. Meanwhile, the cooperative sector can play a significant role in the employment of rural women. But a vital issue that is important in this regard is the factors that ...
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Rural women's employment can be one of the ways to generate income, reduce the pressure on resources, and as a result, rural development. Meanwhile, the cooperative sector can play a significant role in the employment of rural women. But a vital issue that is important in this regard is the factors that influence the decision and intention of rural women who are members of local micro funds to start investing and working in cooperatives. In this regard, this research was designed to investigate factors affecting the behavioral intention of rural women members of Lorestan Province Micro Credit Funds towards self-employment in Cooperatives. The statistical population consisted of all rural women members of Lorestan Province Micro Credit Funds (N= 1087) who sampling of multistage quota proportional to the sample size through Krejcie and Morgan sampling table resulted in to select of 307 samples. Data collection in this study was conducted using a researcher-made questionnaire. After preparing the questionnaire and confirming its validity by the experts panel, its reliability was confirmed through a pilot study by calculating Cronbach's alpha values for the variables investigated. Structural equation modeling was used to determine factors influencing rural women's intention to self-employment in cooperatives through AMOS24. The results revealed that the interests variable has the highest direct impact on rural women's intention to self-employment in cooperatives and self-efficacy has the highest indirect influence on rural women's intention to self-employment in cooperatives.
Rural Development
Naser Seifollahi; Golsum Akbari Arbatan
Abstract
The modern world has already taken the first step towards a fundamental technological reality, the digital economy. The modern global labor market is a complex multi-component and dynamic system that is constantly influenced by information technology and requires changes in the content of the work process, ...
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The modern world has already taken the first step towards a fundamental technological reality, the digital economy. The modern global labor market is a complex multi-component and dynamic system that is constantly influenced by information technology and requires changes in the content of the work process, its organization, the structure of employment and social and labor relations. The use of digital technologies creates new opportunities for businesses, including businesses located in rural areas, to enhance business growth and economic development, businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas often suffer from poor digital connectivity and digital exclusion, including lack of access Internet and low levels of digital literacy, they face problems. With this aim, this research has developed and validated a conceptual framework with thematic analysis method in a descriptive manner, through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The statistical population includes experts and experts and rural business owners, among whom 12 people were selected by purposeful sampling and participated in this study. The reliability of interview analysis is 79%. In order to ensure the validity of the research, it was tried to be a statistical sample of people who have the necessary knowledge and expertise in the context of the research, as well as to minimize the intervention of researchers in the research, and also to refer the coding result to a number of experts and obtain their final approval regarding the extraction framework. Findings of the study showed that, the challenges and opportunities of the digital economy in rural businesses, which include two comprehensive and central themes, 10 organizing themes and 52 basic themes. The opportunities facing the digital economy in rural businesses with 5 organizing themes and 21 basic concepts include things such as job value creation, convergence of technology with economic goals, global customer orientation, networking capability, business resilience, which can transform the capability into potential value in the implementation of the economy. They provide digital. It refers to the challenges and problems and factors involved in the implementation of digital technologies in rural businesses. It includes 5 organizing themes and 31 primary concepts, which are: digital process gaps, creating a black economy for rural businesses, adverse social effects, cultural aspects, technological risks that make the implementation of the digital economy more difficult. The results of the present study indicated that, The rapid growth of the digital economy, and especially the COVID-19 pandemic, has accelerated the spread of digital technology use, leading to an urgent need to align rural women's home businesses with government policies. Many rural women's home businesses have been digitally deprived due to the digital divide and the resulting limitations. They may face challenging business conditions to continue their careers. In addition, the female workforce in rural areas lacks the necessary flexibility in labor markets to adapt. This shows that rural women's home businesses should use technology and upgrade training programs to equip themselves with the right skill sets.. Therefore, during the rapid digital transformation, not only should immediate investment be considered in digital connectivity and networks for rural businesses that are underserved by digital services, but also digital skills and literacy should be increased and help absorb new digital innovations.
Rural Development
Mahtab Valizadeh; Farahnaz Rostami; Nematollah Shiri; Mojgan Khoshmaram
Abstract
Context: The low participation rate of women in economic activities has caused the entrepreneurship rate of women to be lower than that of men. Without the economic participation of women in starting SMEs, it will be challenging for developing countries to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals ...
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Context: The low participation rate of women in economic activities has caused the entrepreneurship rate of women to be lower than that of men. Without the economic participation of women in starting SMEs, it will be challenging for developing countries to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals and reach their full economic and social potential. Recent studies show that the gender difference in the rate of economic participation and entrepreneurship is not only due to the low success rate of female entrepreneurs, but the main reason is that few women are able to start a business. Therefore, try to promote entrepreneurial businesses among rural women is very important. The starting point for launching a business is opportunity recognition, and the process of identifying entrepreneurial opportunities is different for women than for men. Therefore, it is very important to carry out researches with the aim of identifying factors that influence the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities among women. Considering that in many developing countries, women have less access to financial resources than men, so this is one of the reasons for the low level of economic participation of women. In this regard, the project of microcredit funds for financial support of women in order to start entrepreneurial businesses has been implemented in different countries, including Iran.Object: Now, after many years have passed since the establishment of these funds in Kermanshah province with the aim of financing the rural women of this region to start entrepreneurial businesses, the present study was conducted with the main aim of analyzing factors influencing the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities among rural women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah.Research Method: This paper in terms of the paradigm, purpose and method of data collection is quantitative research, applied research and field research study. The study population in this study were all women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah (N = 626) that according to the table of Bartlett et al., 201 of them using stratified random sampling method with proportional assignment Were selected as research samples. The main data collection tool was a questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed using content validity and convergent validity and combined reliability and Cronbach's alpha. SPSS and Smart PLS software were used to analyze the collected data.Findings: Findings of the study showed that entrepreneurship education, social capital and entrepreneurial skills were the effective factors on entrepreneurial opportunities among rural women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah. According the results About the trainings provided by the microcredit fund, most of the respondents (34.3%) stated that they participated in these trainings once or twice. Also, 35.3% of them stated that they have participated in the training provided by the agricultural extension between 1 and 2 times. In relation to receiving informal entrepreneurial training, as the results of the distribution of respondents in terms of the index of standard deviation distance from the mean show, the majority of respondents (91%) were in the lower and weak middle class. The average opportunity recognition ability of the respondents is 3.41 with a standard deviation of 0.60. Among the dimensions of the ability to recognize the opportunity, creating innovative solutions from the opportunity had a higher average (3.51) than other dimensions. Also, the findings of the study indicated that the average entrepreneurial skills of rural women members of the fund are 3.15 with a standard deviation of 0.63. As the findings, more than half of the respondents (56.7 percent) were in the lower middle class in terms of entrepreneurial skills. Overall the results of the study showed that rural women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah are at an average level in terms of the ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities. Also findings of the study showed that entrepreneurship education, social capital and entrepreneurial skills were the effective factors on entrepreneurial opportunities among rural women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah.Conclusion: The results of the present study indicated that, in addition to the direct effect, entrepreneurial education has an indirect effect through social capital on the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities by rural women who are members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah. The results of the present study indicated that entrepreneurial skills have a positive and significant effect on recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities among rural women members of microcredit funds in Kermanshah. Therefore, it can be concluded that by improving entrepreneurial skills, the ability to recognize opportunities among rural women members of microcredit funds can be improved. In fact, entrepreneurial skills such as planning and setting work goals, designing and developing a business plan, financial and accounting issues, analyzing problems and providing solutions help rural women to better address the gaps in the society and in fact to identify entrepreneurial opportunities.
Rural Development
Aliakbar Anabestani; Shokofeh Moamelvand; Mahdi Javanshiri
Abstract
The development thinkers have always agreed on human excellence in all aspects, yet in many countries the issue of gender has become a basis for socio-cultural, economic, political, etc. In inequalities, and this leads to a serious challenge and dilemma in achieving sustainable development. ...
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The development thinkers have always agreed on human excellence in all aspects, yet in many countries the issue of gender has become a basis for socio-cultural, economic, political, etc. In inequalities, and this leads to a serious challenge and dilemma in achieving sustainable development. Rural areas, because of the dominant sexism, women and their empowerment in various fields, are ignored whereas their participation as well as men’s can facilitate the process of achieving development. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate gender approaches to sustainable development in villages around the metropolis of Karaj. The research method in the present study is descriptive-analytical and its type is applied in terms of purpose. Documentary and field methods have been used to collect data. Statistically, it covers the population of 10 villages located in the central part of Karaj city and out of a total of 3987 households living in rural suburb settlements. According to the Cochran's formula, the sample size of 228 households was estimated, and these individuals were selected by random sampling method. To test the conceptual model of the research and to investigate the effect of research dimensions on sustainable development, the partial least squares technique and Smart PLS software were used. According to the results, the coefficients of t between the main variables of the study are above 2.58, and there is a significant and direct relationship. Thus, economic, social, environmental and institutional dimensions have a positive and significant effect on sustainable development. The value of R2 shows that 96.7% of sustainable development is explained by achieving four dimensions, and the economic dimension with a coefficient of 0.88 has a greater effect on other dimensions in a sustainable rural development. Also, the results of t-test with two independent nodes showed that in the study area, gender type was not effective only in economic and sustainable development indicators, but rather was in three indicators of social, environmental and institutional. Therefore, all of these dimensions, in terms of importance and necessity, require well-planned planning and action to improve, neglecting of which can improve the process of improving sustainable rural development and could challenge the positive role of gender approach in it.
Rural Development
Masoud Yazdanpanah; Kazhal Khedri; Masoumeh Forouzani; Masoud Baradaran
Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the factors influencing women’s participation in social, economic, and political activities in rural areas of Likak city. Target population of this study is active rural women of 15 to 64 years old in Likak city. Based on Morgan table, 300 women were ...
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The aim of this study was to investigate the factors influencing women’s participation in social, economic, and political activities in rural areas of Likak city. Target population of this study is active rural women of 15 to 64 years old in Likak city. Based on Morgan table, 300 women were selected as sample using a random sampling method. We have used a questionnaire as data collection instrument which its validity was confirmed by a group of experts and its reliability was evaluated by Cronbach alpha coefficients (0.73-0.94). The results of this study have indicated the high mean of women’s participation in social, economic and political activities in the rural society. Moreover, the results have also revealed that there is negative correlation between economic, political and social participations and a number of key variables such as gender stereotype, farmer identity and housewife identity. The results of structural equation modeling analysis have showed that self-efficacy and housewife identity have positive effect on participation intention. In addition, gender stereotype has negative effect on social, economic and political participations. The model explained 85% of the variance in economical participation, 77% of that in social participation, and 69% in political participation. Therefore, it is recommended to give value to the activities of housewives in society and media and to create material and moral rights for these activities. Holding the meeting of housewives with active and successful women can increase women's self-efficacy.
Rural Development
Seyed Ahmad Firouzabadi; Hossein Imani Jajarmi; Hamideh Dabbaghi
Abstract
Nowadays, social entrepreneurship in the form of different organizational structures (profit, non-profit, or combination, charities, cooperatives, joint-stock companies, businesses, unions) creates social value. The cooperatives play an expanding role in the society and the number of women as their ...
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Nowadays, social entrepreneurship in the form of different organizational structures (profit, non-profit, or combination, charities, cooperatives, joint-stock companies, businesses, unions) creates social value. The cooperatives play an expanding role in the society and the number of women as their member is increasing. This research is to investigate whether rural women's cooperatives in Iran, considering they are a combination of both private and public sectors, can be a platform for social entrepreneurship. We have analyzed eight interviews rural women as members of a rural women's cooperative and the text of law about cooperative companies. Moreover, we have applied grounded theory as our method and the MAX QDA as a software to analyze qualitative data. The results of this research show that 438 semantic terms were extracted and categorized into 5 categories of clusters, 16 main themes, and 42 sub-themes. During the establishment of a cooperative in 2011, there have been two kinds of capital-financial facilities, human capital and knowledge. The nature of the created business in the cooperative has addressed rural women as the community and their problems as social problems. Analysis of the social problems shows that this cooperative has initially intended to create job for the entrepreneurs and secondly to solve the local economic problems of women, especially those as the head of the household. The Entrepreneurship Environment in the rural women's cooperatives (Mehr Afarin Eram) consists of four main factors: entrepreneurs, rural women as local community, special aspects in social, cultural, economic and legal contexts, as well as the obstacles against the cooperatives. Strategies of these cooperatives are formed via current strategies like training part, human resource management, financial, production and sales as well as development strategies in the future. Additionally, the achievements and outcomes of the cooperatives shows that Mehr Afarin Eram can empower women, create objective and subjective values, and achieve financial success.
Rural Development
Amir Hussein Ali Beygi; Nasrin Afshar; Mahna Shahmoradi
Abstract
In our country, there are many obstacles for active participation of rural girls in development; rural girls can be considered as the most deprived members in rural communities. Identification of rural girls’ difficulties could help remove the barriers of rural youth empowerment. The current research ...
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In our country, there are many obstacles for active participation of rural girls in development; rural girls can be considered as the most deprived members in rural communities. Identification of rural girls’ difficulties could help remove the barriers of rural youth empowerment. The current research aims to identify the difficulties of rural girls using grounded theory method. The study population consisted of rural girls of one rural area in Kermanshah city. The data of this study were collected by deep interview and direct observation that continued until theoretical saturation. The findings of study showed that rural girls are faced by many different problems. In this study, unemployment was identified as a central problem, and context, causes, interventions and connected strategies of which were analyzed. Moreover, some consequences were pointed the destructive effects of which will be observed in both rural and urban areas if no measure is taken to improve the current condition.
Rural Development
Jafar Yaghoubi; Parisa Najafloo; Elaheh Haghverdi
Abstract
The main purpose of this research was to study different aspects of self-employment among the agricultural female students in University of Zanjan. The statistical population of the study consisted of senior female students in agriculture faculty of Zanjan University in 2014-2015 academic year (N= 135). ...
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The main purpose of this research was to study different aspects of self-employment among the agricultural female students in University of Zanjan. The statistical population of the study consisted of senior female students in agriculture faculty of Zanjan University in 2014-2015 academic year (N= 135). According to Cochran's formula, 63 students were selected using a stratified random sampling method. The research tool was a questionnaire. Validity of the instrument was confirmed by a panel of faculty members and experts of the field. The reliability was determined by pilot test and calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.71-0.88). The results of this study showed that the most important priority for employment was cooperative work, self-employment and recruitment. The most important motivation for self-employment was greater prosperity, freedom and flexibility to work and use all the knowledge, skills and their ideas. Most students tend to agricultural employment in the service section. The self-employment requirements included: need of financial capital, benefiting from specialized training and experience in the field to set up business on one’s own way. Using exploratory factor analysis, barriers to female students self-employment in agriculture were summarized into seven factors including: supporting law and gender barriers, agricultural risks and weaknesses in communication skills, physical weakness and knowledge, attitude and security, tendency to indolence and failure to taking risk in employment, lack of technical and management skills and lack of facilities. These factors explained 74.34% of barriers to female students' self-employment in agriculture.
Rural Development
Rohollah Rezaei; Sepideh Norozi; Gholamreza Mojaradi; Leila Safa
Abstract
Today, Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) is an important indicator of development; however, due to the greater vulnerability, HRQOL level of women is lower than men, especially in rural regions. This problem has doubled the necessity to investigate and identify the factors affecting HRQOL. Given ...
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Today, Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) is an important indicator of development; however, due to the greater vulnerability, HRQOL level of women is lower than men, especially in rural regions. This problem has doubled the necessity to investigate and identify the factors affecting HRQOL. Given the importance of the issue, the purpose of this descriptive- correlative research was to study the effect of health-promoting lifestyle components on rural women’s HRQOL. The statistical population of the research consisted of all women in rural regions of West Islam Abad Township whose age ranged from 15 to 64 years old (N= 13835). According to the Bartlett et al. Table (2001), a sample size of 250 was selected using multiple stage sampling technique. The standard questionnaire was used to collect data. The results indicated that women’s HRQOL had a positive and significant relationship with age, size of family, number of children and years of married life and a negative and significant relationship with literacy level and time spent on daily sport activities. Also, the results showed that mean score of women’ s HRQOL differed significantly in terms of marital status, situation of head of household, having insurance and periodic medical examinations. Finally, based on findings, six components of health-promoting lifestyle including nutrition management, social support, health responsibility, exercise, stress management and life appreciation explained 57 percent of variances of rural women’s HRQOL.
Rural Development
Ali Shams; Nazilla Nabizadeh; Hosein Shabanali Fami
Abstract
Any economic development planning of rural regions needs an initial investigation of rural women's role in the production system, hence the purpose of this descriptive- survey study was to investigate rural women's role in animal husbandry activities. The statistical population consisted of all rural ...
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Any economic development planning of rural regions needs an initial investigation of rural women's role in the production system, hence the purpose of this descriptive- survey study was to investigate rural women's role in animal husbandry activities. The statistical population consisted of all rural families (N=6571) in Charuymaq county among which 135 were selected through a multistage randomised sampling method based on Cochran's sampling formula. The research tool was a researcher-constructed questionnaire the validity of which was verified by a panel of experts in the related field and to check its reliability, a Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was computed which was higher than 0.7 for composite constructs. The results showed that majority of women (60.7%) had a neutral attitude toward animal husbandry activities. Hard nature of animal activities was the most important barrier of women's participation. Preparing households food requirements (self-consumption) and feeling responsibile toward household were the most intrinsic and extrinsic motives of women regarding their participation, respectively. The majority of women had a low level of mass media information usage and TV was the first source of their information gathering. Women had the highest participation in milking and processing and the least in grazing the animals.
Rural Development
Farahnaz Rostami; Mariyeh Sahraee; Tahere Maleki; Fatemeh Sasani; Mahna Shahmoradi
Abstract
Human resources development is a key factor and a pre-requisite for achieving sustainable rural development. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to rural women and girls, as half of the human resource potential of rural communities.Women and girls form an important part of society toward rural ...
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Human resources development is a key factor and a pre-requisite for achieving sustainable rural development. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to rural women and girls, as half of the human resource potential of rural communities.Women and girls form an important part of society toward rural sustainability development because of their role as future mothers. So, improving their situation leads to improve the situation of rural communities in the future. Also, it is crucial to solve their problems to achieve sustainable growth and development in these communities. Therefore, pathology of the challenges and problems of girls in the rural communities is the main concern of the current study. A total of 3600 girls (N=3600) in Mahdasht reign were selected based on simple random sampling (n= 132), among ten villages by assigning appropriate method. Research instrument was a questionnaire the reliability of which was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficients (α= 0.7). Factor analysis was used to analyze the data. Research findings indicated five factors including psychological trauma, less education– welfare, social pathologies, economic– health poverty and the girls facing challenges in the marriage, to form 65.53 percent of total variance of girls' problems.
Rural Development
Leila Vossoughi; Mahdieh Ghasemi
Abstract
Regarding gender inequality in many communities, empowerment of women has become an important subject and received more attention in recent years. Results of many researches show that tourism especially ecotourism affects women empowerment in its different aspects by making them interested in participating ...
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Regarding gender inequality in many communities, empowerment of women has become an important subject and received more attention in recent years. Results of many researches show that tourism especially ecotourism affects women empowerment in its different aspects by making them interested in participating tourism activities. Based on findings of previous researches, the current study aims to assess the role of ecotourism development on empowerment of rural women using a descriptive survey method. The population consists of women of Shib-Deraz in Qeshm Island who participate in environmental plan of “conservation of Eretmochelys Embricate “with an emphasis on ecotourism and handicrafts”. A questionnaire was designed based on a theoretical framework. Results show that development of ecotourism can influence social, psychological and economic empowerment of rural women.
Rural Development
Mehdi Nooripor; Zahra Tavakolitabar; Shahab Mirzaei
Abstract
Cooperatives can be considered as suitable means to achieve social and economic development, employment and participation. Undoubtedly, rural women's membership in cooperatives can be really useful in the process of rural development. Social capital is one of the key determinants of women's participation ...
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Cooperatives can be considered as suitable means to achieve social and economic development, employment and participation. Undoubtedly, rural women's membership in cooperatives can be really useful in the process of rural development. Social capital is one of the key determinants of women's participation in different social activities. Social capital may act directly through physical investment or indirectly through reducing transactions costs, satisfying people and making social action. Both of these functions can move rural societies towards development. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate social capital components determinant for women membership in production cooperatives of Choram County. A descriptive- correlational research method was used in this study. Research sample include all of women members of rural cooperatives of Choram County and the same number of Non- members. Research tool was a predesigned questionnaire that it's validity was verified using face validity procedure and it's reliability way also verified using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient obtained from a pilot study (from 0.65 to 0.89). The results showed that the mean score of social capital was significantly more in members in comparison to non- members. Also, the result of logistic regression showed that five components i.e. interaction, trust, cooperation, solidarity and participation were significant determinants of women's membership in production cooperatives of study area respectively.
economics
Ahmad Yaghoubi Farani; Hajar Vahdat Moaddab; Somayeh Latifi
Abstract
Home business is one of the best fields of women's economic activity and considered as an important strategy for job creation, particularly for rural women. Nonetheless many barriers avoid addressing rural women to these businesses. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the most important barriers ...
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Home business is one of the best fields of women's economic activity and considered as an important strategy for job creation, particularly for rural women. Nonetheless many barriers avoid addressing rural women to these businesses. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the most important barriers for trends of rural women and girls to home businesses. The statistical population of this study was rural women that are over 18 years in Sardrod district in Razan county, Hamedan province. 187 people were studied randomly according to Cochran formula. The most important data collection tool was a questionnaire that its validity was confirmed by panel of experts and Its reliability was tested by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. According to results of factor analysis, barriers to rural women trend to establish home businesses were classified in six factors that were: social and cultural, infrastructure and finance, personality, support, domestic and training. Social and cultural factors as the most important factor was introduced.
Rural Development
Heshmatollah Saadi; Hajar Vahdat Moaddab
Abstract
Female heads of households are responsible for the material and spiritual needs of the families because of a deceased, missing, separated, divorced, addicted, disabled (permanent or temporary), imprisonment, ill or military deployed male head of households. Survey research was employed in the study. ...
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Female heads of households are responsible for the material and spiritual needs of the families because of a deceased, missing, separated, divorced, addicted, disabled (permanent or temporary), imprisonment, ill or military deployed male head of households. Survey research was employed in the study. The target population includes rural women heads of households Razan city. Following Cochran’s formula, a sample of 92 participants was randomly selected. After an extensive literature review, a standardized questionnaire for measure of household food insecurity was used. The questionnaire reliability which is estimated by Cronbach’s Alpha was 89.5.Findings of research indicated that food security for 25 percent of women in over and 75 percent of them are different degrees of food insecurity. So food security have significant relationship with factors such as education, the number of children under 18 years old, supervisory status, and home ownership.
