Determinants of Women Social Roles in Rural Activities: A Case Study of Kordestan Province

Although women as half of world human resources have to participate in development – and, particularly, rural development – plans to get benefit from their human rights and make use of the development advantages, existing facts reveal that they lack a specific social status, in spite of their endeavours in many activities, within villages, mainly caused by a lack or inadequacy of researches about roles and activities of rural women, which in turn caused neglecting them in planning and policy-making. Therefore, the present research studies the social roles of rural women to assist planners and policy-makers in the planning process. The framework of Parson's vertical role differentiation was used, and four roles including strategic, influential, auxiliary, and normal roles were considered to study the women social roles in the Kordestan province. As the research deals with certain individual and family factors and their impact on the women social roles while describing these roles, it is considered as a descriptive-correlation research, using questionnaire technique with a validity rate of 75%; also sampling was carried out by a cluster-random method. 210 questionnaires were completed in villages of five counties including Sanandaj, Saqqez, Diwandarreh, Mariwan, and Qorveh. Statistical population consisted of the rural women of 25 years old and over. SPSS software was used to analyze data. Results indicate that family characteristics are the most effective factors in explaining the roles played by the women, and the individual characteristics are in the second place. Therefore, plans and suggestions presented must be formulated according to the family characteristics of the rural women and their men's viewpoints to ensure their implementation.