Analysis of the Effects of Rural Women Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (The Case of Marvdasht County, Fars Province)

The entrepreneurship development of women is one of the most important topics on the agenda of development worldwide and especially in many developing countries. Some experts of rural development believe that recognizing the capabilities and skills of women, especially rural women, as well as promoting their creative talents in exploiting the profiteable opportunities would have many positive social effects. During the last decade in Iran, the contribution of women in private and non-governmental businesses has been grown, and rural women are employed in small and medium-sized rural enterprises called SMEs. In this regard, the main purpose of the current research was to identify the effects of establish and develop the SMEs of rural women in Marvdasht county of Fars province. The studied population was the members of the microcredit fund of Marvdahdt in rural areas. A random sample of 71 women entrepreneurs were selected for data collection using a survey and questionnaire. Based on the findings, there was a significant difference in the social communication and networking of rural women entrepreneurs that the younger educated women with less membership background, had better interaction and more successful communication with the governmental and private institutions and experts. The effects of rural women's employment in SMEs were categorized into four categories of personal-psychological, economic, cultural-social and environmental due to the exploratory factor analysis. Finally, it is recommended that more rural women should be encouraged and motivated to join to the microcredit rual fund, based on many positive effects of SMEs for the women group as well as the overall rural society. It is also suggested to provide purposeful and structured educational-skill workshops in order to strengthen teamwork and social networking for launching collective businesses.