Investigating the Mediating Role of Self-esteem and Self-efficacy in Analysis of the Socio-cultural Factors Influencing Rural Women’s Empowerment

Today, women’s empowerment is one of the most important challenges and concerns of the 21st century; because empowerment of women is fundamentally the process of upliftment of cultural, economic, social and political status of women, especially women who are deprived in the society. The study population was consist of rural women in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province that according to Krejcie and Morgan sample determination table, 384 of them were selected by stratified random sampling method. A questionnaire was used as research tools. Reliability and validity of survey instrument was evaluated. Face and content validity of the questionnaire had been confirmed by panel of experts and key informant before the pre-test stage. The reliability of instrument was assessed by conducting a pilot study among 30 samples out of the original sample. The reliability of instrument for the all sections based on Cronbach's alpha coefficients value (in the range of 0.72 to 0.94) shows acceptable level of internal consistency. Data analysis was performed by AMOS22 software. The collected data was analyzed using structural equation modeling technique. The results based on direct structural model showed that there is a positive significant relationship between variables such as women position in the family, social participation and social protection with the dependent variable of rural women’s empowerment and there is a negative significant relationship between cultural barriers with the dependent variable of rural women’s empowerment. Also, self-esteem and self-efficacy variables had a mediation role on the relationship between socio-cultural factors with rural women’s empowerment.