The Study of Impact of Industrialization and Background Variables on Empowerment (Case Study: Rural Area of County of Qorveh)

Introduction Today empowerment has been turned into one of the main concepts of sustainable development. Three types of relationship between empowerment and sustainable development are as follows: 1- Empowerment is a component of sustainable development 2- Empowerment is the cause of sustainable development3- Empowerment is the result of sustainable development. Therefore it is not possible achieve a sustainable development lacking empowerment of villagers. Empower the villagers is affected by many factors, such as: background variables and Effects of plans and projects implemented in rural areas. This article studies the background variables of individuals as well as the effects of a steel factory on the empowerment of villagers. The study area is an industrialized rural district of Yalghuz Agaj in Qorveh county. Different definitions have been presented about the concept ofempowerment. This is due to two factors: 1- Empowerment is a multidimensionalconcept; and. 2- Empowerment is used in various fields such as management,psychology, geography, agriculture, sociology, etc. Empowerment as the wardshows is a process to empower people through which they can overcomes feelingsof their helplessness and inabilities. There are many advantages to empower such ashaving access to the basic needs, satisfaction, self - esteem, sense of belonging andcommitment, reducing the costs when increasing the profits, increasingparticipation, etc. Empowerment has many dimensions that they can be classified inthe six dimensions of economic, political, mental, social, legal and cultural. Theeconomic empowerment, as well as the social and mental one is more important thanthe others. Various factors are involved in the process of empowering the villagersthat background variables of individuals act as an important factor. Different studiesshow the influence of background variables on empowerment through differentfactors such as employment, income, education, gender and age. In addition to thementioned variables, empowerment of individuals is influenced by developmentpolicies. The opinions are about the social and economic benefits of industry in ruralareas can be stated as follows. From the viewpoint of economy, industrializing therural areas includes many advantages such as, increasing farmer's incomes,employment opportunities and job security as well. Such a process could acceleraterural economic empowerment and thus cause non - agricultural job opportunities,reduce the income gap between rural and urban households and between the ruralhouseholds the meselves. Development of rural industry from the viewpoint ofsocial and mental factors lead to increased subjective and objective welfare,increasing of trust and development of social relationships that causes positiveresults like increased social and mental empowerment of villagers.MethodologyIn this study, survey method has been used to the issue. The study population of case – study two rural districts Yalghuz Agaj and Qaslan in Qorveh county, Kurdistan province. These two rural districts are similar in many aspects and characteristics such as geographical location, the number of villages under the authority,population, language, religion, possibilities and services etc. The main difference isa steel factory which is located in Yalghuz Agaj that turned the district to anindustrial one, with Qaslan lacks it. Using the Cochran formula 136 households wereselected were selected from Yalghuz Agaj rural district and 121 households from theother, Qaslan. In each household an individual was selected in the range of 25 to 65years old, as a sample.ResultsAmong the studied background variables in rural empowerment the relationships between the factors of age, education, income and job have been confirmed; but relationships with other background variables (sex, family size and number of employed people in household) have not been confirmed. Relationship betweenrural economic empowerment have been approved with five background variablesincluding age, education, income, occupational status and the number of employedindividuals in household. Relationship between social empowerment have loinconfirmed with four background variables (age, education, and income and jobstatus) and mental empowerment is related with three background variables (age,education and job status). The important finding is that the regional industrializationhas not influenced any aspect of rural empowerment.ConclusionThe steel factory in Yalghuz Agaj lacks the local labor and there fore the interactions between the workers and villagers are at the lowest possible level. Infact, the industry is as an isolated part of rural community, so the factory has noimpacts on it. The results show that the established industry in the region does notact an effective role on rural empowerment. In other words, the primary purposes ofmanufacturing industry have not been achieved in the rural district. Ruralindustrialization requires a careful study of characteristics of industry and village.Rural industrialization requires compatible industries with the needs and necessitiesof rural community, so the villagers could work there.