Meta-Synthesis Factors Affecting the Empowerment of Rural Women

In recent years, the concept of "empowerment of rural women" has been used as one of the main pillars of rural development in rural development issues in order to improve the status of women and their society. This applied research was carried out qualitatively with a meta-synthesis approach and its data source included all the studies conducted by Eric, Science, Springer, Scopus, Elsevier, Scientific Information Database (SID), the portal of the Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, the publication of national conferences, and Noor specialized journals in the time period of 2009-2019. In this regard, 240 related studies were evaluated. Finally, by performing the seven steps of Sandelowski and Barroso, forty articles were purposefully selected and by analyzing in open, axial and selective coding methods, their validity was confirmed by Kappa Kaufmann test. The results of the analysis showed that the effective factors in empowerment consisted of four dimensions including educational (production knowledge, self-awareness), individual (self-direction and productivity), structural (facilitating laws, production structuring) and socio-cultural (culture building and social activity power). The results of the present study, by creating a deep understanding of the existing literature on the empowerment of rural women, can be used in rural development policy to empower rural women by organizing the factors affecting it.