The rural women’s view regarding usefulness of ICT in rural Women Cooperatives of Urmia

Experience in most countries has shown that women are important actors in the development and to hold them back is to hold back the potential for economic growth. On the other, the empowering rural women’s use of ICTs is closely connected to socio-economic development, and this potential towards social transformation demands that everyone should have access. Therefore, the purpose of this survey was the study of rural women’s view regarding usefulness of ICT in empowering. This study is descriptive – correlation research. The statistical population of the study consisted of all the 265 women Cooperations’ Members in the Urmia city. Using Krejcie and Morgan’s table and proportional stratified random sampling technique, 152 members were selected as research sample. Interview and questionnaire was the main tool for data gathering. Finally, 172 questionnaires were completed and used for data analyzing. The instrument for collecting data was a questionnaire which its validity was confirmed by a panel of experts. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α= 0.76). The data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results showed that the comparison between the five components of empowerment, the "power of influence" component is more favorable than the other components, while the component "access to resources" is ranked lower than the other components. Also, according to the results of F test, the age of respondents and their history of membership in rural women's cooperatives on the empowerment of women has been effective.