Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Department of Women Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabataba;i University, Tehran, Iran
2 student
Abstract
Rural women's microcredit funds are often considered as one of the important mechanisms for empowerment. In this study, it has been tried to identify and discuss the empowering dimensions and challenges of these funds based on the experience of women benefiting from these credits, as well as their proposed solutions to reduce or adjust the challenging funds of these activities. Based on this, after the participatory observation of the studied field, in-depth interviews were conducted with ten rural women. The women studied in this research had at least two and at most 5 years of membership in their village fund. The data obtained from these interviews were analyzed by maxqda software and with thematic analysis technique under the three main categories of empowering dimensions, challenges and solutions. The themes obtained in the empowering dimensions section refer to the ability to attract investors, increase bargaining power, increase social capital, the extent of communication network and elimination of middlemen .The findings of the challenges section were also identified under the two subheadings of individual and structural challenges, and finally, were proposed solutions such as creativity-oriented ability, the need to improve skills, determining the limits of government intervention, prioritizing production tools and paying attention to comparative advantage to improve the performance of the microcredit fund rural women.
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