The Role of Micro-enterprises in Empowering of Rural Women in some Villages of Damietta Governorate, Egypt

Abstract

This study aimed to highlight the role of micro-enterprises in empowering rural women by showing the extent to which these projects contribute to empowering rural women economically, socially and politically, and determining the factors affecting the role of these projects in empowering rural women. To achieve the objectives of this study, A regular random sampling of 148 rural women who own micro-enterprises was selected out of the total number of micro-enterprises managed by rural women in the intermediate community development associations in some villages of Damietta Governorate, Egypt. To analyze the field data, frequencies, percentages, arithmetic mean, Pearson's simple correlation coefficient and linear regression coefficient were used. The study reached several findings, the most important of which are as follows: Micro-enterprises contributed to a high degree in empowering rural women, economically and socially to a high degree. In addition, the most important factors that affected the degree of contribution of these projects to empowering rural women are: duration of the project, the project’s degree of success, the number of project workers and the value of the loan and ages of respondents. The study ended with a set of recommendations as follows: The necessity of training and qualifying rural women wishing to establish a micro-enterprise on all administrative and marketing aspects and that the organizations supporting micro-enterprises should provide low-interest financing facilities to rural women.