Analyzing the factors affecting the entrepreneurship of rural women in Nahavand County

Villagers and their entrepreneurial skills are important social and economic factors in society and undoubtedly important solutions for rural development, which is also part of the country's sustainable development. In the new theories of rural development, entrepreneurship is a suitable solution for empowerment and capacity building in rural areas to change the current life pattern, reduce the gap between the city and the countryside, and create economic, environmental and institutional economic equality. Many researchers believe that entrepreneurial activities by women have a prominent role in the health of the national economy. In a short time, women were able to create considerable changes in the economic development of countries after being entrepreneurs. However, there are some issues in woman’s empowerment, including the lack of participation of women as half of the country's population (49% of the total population) in social and economic activities, the existence of a large number of women in Iranian society below the poverty line, the lack of self-confidence and self-esteem among them to participate in various social activities, their lack of awareness and knowledge of labor market information, technical and professional training courses, working environment conditions, labor law and most importantly cultural specificities.
Nahavand County is in a good position for integrated development because of its strategic position and abundant resources. However, despite having capabilities, their optimal usage has yet to be made for this county. The rural people of Nahavand County, located south of Hamadan Province, have a very high migration rate due to unemployment and a lack of facilities. For this reason, the problem in the study area is the low level of women's entrepreneurship, personal abilities such as self-confidence and self-esteem, support from the government support and behavioral environment. Therefore, the main issue in this research is analysing factors affecting rural women's entrepreneurship in Nahavand County.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlative in terms of method, so the study follows the positivism paradigm. The statistical population of the research consists of women entrepreneurs in the villages of Nahavand County, and a total of 110 people were surveyed as a sample. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. Analysis of the obtained data was done using SmartPLS3 software.

The research findings indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between individual factors, family factors, economic factors, sociocultural factors and entrepreneurship of rural women, based on the results of path analysis, the influence of individual factors (0.556); family factors (0.125); economic factors (0.398); cultural-social factors (0.349), which shows the impact of all identified factors on rural women's entrepreneurship. Also, individual and economic criteria had the greatest impact on rural women's entrepreneurship.