Women empowerment in Portuguese rural municipalities: Outcomes from a project

The work presented here is based in a set of outcomes from a project developed in four rural municipalities of the center of Portugal, with the names Vouzela, Mangualde, Seia and Guarda. This project was supported by the National Support Reference Framework (NSRF) and had the objective of the women empowerment. The NSRF is a framework financed by Portuguese and European funds and has a duration from 2007 to 2013. The objective of this work is, using the information that it was possible obtain with this project, to analyze the dynamics, essentially, of the women in rural areas, namely at the empowerment level. For that it was examined, specifically, the expectations of different groups of namely women about the possibility of valorization and more society participation at several levels. It is possible to conclude about the weak expectations of public in general in the rural zones about the possibilities of empowerment, namely because social, cultural and economic contexts.