TY - JOUR ID - 62356 TI - Rural women's knowledge and social needs for the integrated watershed management in the Ghezel Tape Ali Gholi Village in the Zanjan Province JO - Woman in Development & Politics JA - JWDP LA - en SN - 2538-3124 AU - Karami Dehkordi, Esmail AU - Babaee, Roghayeh AD - Associate Professor of Agricultural Extension, Communication and Rural Development Department, University of Zanjan, Iran AD - MSc Graduate of Agricultural Extension and Education, University of Zanjan, Iran Y1 - 2017 PY - 2017 VL - 15 IS - 2 SP - 241 EP - 264 KW - rural women KW - need KW - Knowledge KW - social capacity KW - integrated watershed management DO - 10.22059/jwdp.2017.62356 N2 - Rural women play an important role in supporting their rural households' livelihoods and can significantly contribute to the sustainable natural resources management programmes. The current research aims to investigate rural women's livelihood activities and their related needs for enhancing their knowledge and social capacities. The study was conducted using a case study through participatory rapid appraisal techniques in the Ghezel Tape Aligholi Village located in the Zanjan Province of Iran. Rural women contributed to their households' livelihoods through various livelihood strategies, comprising non-agricultural activities including carpet weaving; agricultural activities dependent on rangelands, specially collecting naturally medicinal and edible plants; and agricultural activities with low dependency on rangelands, particularly product harvest and local processing. Assessing rural women' needs showed that they mostly needed updated knowledge and skills regarding proper harvest, processing and packaging of horticultural and dairy products, natural resources conservation methods, new agricultural and non-agricultural activities, and higher literacy. The necessity to improve rural women's environmental attitude, particularly about rural waste management was also recognised to be an important need. Moreover, they need to strengthen their social capacities, particularly in regard to influencing agricultural markets, relations and trust in rural communities and with external actors, and strengthening rural women organisations. These needs imply the necessity of developing agricultural extension and natural resources management programmes for human and social capacity building of rural women. UR - https://jwdp.ut.ac.ir/article_62356.html L1 - https://jwdp.ut.ac.ir/article_62356_8f5b2ae376a700db10e3e9e168e33a2d.pdf ER -