The Role of Tourism and Ecotourism Resorts in Empowering Rural Women (Case Study: Razavi Khorasan Province)

Rural tourism is one of the most important types of tourism that plays an important role in socio-economic development of rural communities and can be effective in economic independence, creation of new job opportunities and improvement of social conditions of rural women. One of the interesting and new measures of rural tourism development is the creation of eco-tourism resorts. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of tourism and development of eco-tourism resorts in economic and social empowerment of rural women. This is an applied and developmental research with a descriptive-analytic approach with a deductive approach. Required information was collected through library, documentary and field studies (interview tools, questionnaires and direct observation). The statistical population of the study consisted of 110 rural women (permanent and non-permanent) employed in Khorasan Razavi resettlement centers that were established between 94 and 96 years, including 21 residences in 13 villages and 3 cities of the province. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and one sample T-test and Friedman test were used to test the research hypotheses. The development of eco-lodges in the study area with an overall average of 2.5 has had a small effect on the economic empowerment of rural women. But the social effects were obtained with an average of 2.8 higher, which indicates more effects on women's social empowerment. With the Farid Man rank test, it was found that the highest rank of economic empowerment belongs to the index of "increasing job opportunities" and the highest rank of social empowerment belongs to the increase of "sense of spatial belonging". Also, Pearson test showed a positive correlation between economic and social empowerment of rural women.