A STUDY OF SOME DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCI-ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF WOMEN IN THE RURAL AND URBAN AREAS OF ASSIUT GOVERNORATE

Women's issues in the Arab Republic of Egypt lately witness a great interest and a strong belief in the important role they play in community development. However, rural women suffer various types of retardation and lack of education, health or living services although they play many important roles that drive the rural developmental process. Despite numerous attempts by the government to improve women's conditions in society, rural women's conditions had no impact because all programs for women benefit urban women rather than rural women, who suffer social isolation. Therefore, the present research aimed to study some of the Demographic, Soci-economic and living aspects of both rural and urban women in Assiut Governorate, as well as identify the differences between women in rural and urban areas in the these aspects. In order to achieve this, the research relied on two types of data, mamely secondary data from the 2017 census and preliminary data, which have been collected through a questionnaire prepared for this purpose. Five centers were randomly selected and the city was chosen as urban. Each village was randomly chosen to represent the rurals, The data were collected from a sample of 250 families from each of the selected cities and villages. The data from the recent census of 2017 showed that there were some differences between rural and urban women in some social, demographic and economic aspects. The data collected from the study sample revealed differences in many demographic aspects such as age of marriage, preferred age of marriage for males, preferred age of marriage for females, number of births, number of children desired, and the use of family planning methods. Social aspects included marriage, decision making, community participation, openness to the outside world, educational aspects such as preference for educating children rather than learning a craft, the importance of educating girls. Health aspects included attending to a doctor during pregnancy, continuing to vaccinate children, using home remedies, economic aspects included having a bank account, having an insurance policy, preference for private employment, and participation in household expenses. Living conditions included the dwelling being healthy, certain characteristics of the dwelling, agricultural aspects such as land ownership, poultry farming and animal husbandry.