The Path Analysis of Social Capital Components in Economic Empowering of Rural Women in Iran

Empowering has been considered as a tool to privilege the people in the third millennia to obtain social, economic and cultured development, especially for those living in rural areas. This has become a great concern for most governments which would like to change the structure of villages under the crisis situation. Education and occupation are two important parameters which can be used to measure the efficacy of empowering the people in these areas. The focus of some governments and authorities is women in these areas as the hidden and silent stratum of the society. It is believed that letting women play a role in their finding their status can help them to change the economic power of the family and improve the arrangement of society. By doing that, the society can enjoy the energy and thought of a part which can strengthen the other part. After the Islamic revolution in Iran, the motto of empowering women has so widely spread that there have been implemented different programs and plans for women to improve their status in the society. Women, in rural areas, have had a different situation from those living in urban areas. The family restrictions have imposed many limitations on women's participation in social activities. Establishing special schools for illiterate women has helped them to become more aware of their situation and find solutions to improve their economic problem. On the other hand, official pressures make more women involved in economic activities have provided more opportunity for women to the present paper aims to answer some questions to clarify the trend ahead; (1) What is the rate of indices of economic empowerment and social capital in statistical samples in Iran? (2) What extent of rural women’s economic empowerment is determined by social capital indices? This research is a quantitative, non-experimental and instrumental study in which the statistic sample is consisted of 45334 rural women in Hamedan, Iran. From each parish, based on class attributes, 13 villages were chosen randomly and the selected statistical sample became 256 persons. To determine the validity of questionnaire, 30 questionnaire were completed by rural women. The results showed that the research tool is of great ability for gathering the data and there is a significant and positive relationship between the components of social resources and economic empowerment. The variables introduced in analysis model explained 42% of economic empowerment variations. It can be definitely concluded that there is a long path to pave for empowering the women in rural areas. The most direct influence of empowering plans in rural areas of Iran can be seen in the downsizing of families as the women are aware of educational system and the family handling more and more. Unfortunately, the distribution of social capital has been unfair in different regions of Iran. Due to the negative policies, most concentration has been on megacities, leading to undue growth of big cities and overwhelming immigration