Authors
Abstract
Introduction: Today empowerment has become to one of the main concepts of sustainable development.j Three types of relationship between empowerment and sustainable development are: 1- Empowerment is component of sustainable development. 2- Empowerment is the cause of sustainable development. 3- Empowerment is the result of sustainable development. Therefore it is not possible achievement to sustainable development without the empowerment of villagers. Empowerment of 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 and effects of steel factory on the empowerment of villagers. The study area is industrializ j ed rural district of Yalghuz Agaj in the county of Qorveh. Different definitions are presented about the concept of empowerment. This is due to two factors: 1- Empowerment is a multidimensional concept. 2- Empowerment is used in various fields, such as: Management, Psychology, Geography, Agriculture, sociology et al. Empowerment is a process to empower people through which they can be overcome feelings of their helplessness and inability. There are many advantages to empower such as access to basic needs, satisfaction, self esteem, Sense of belonging and commitment, reducing costs and increasing profits, Increasing j participation, etc. Empowerment has many dimensions that they can be classified in the six dimensions of economic, political, mental, social, legal and cultural. Economic j empowerment, social empowerment and mental empowerment are more important than other empowerments in the rural community.Various factors are involved in the process of empowerment that background variables of individuals have an important role. Different studies indicate that the influence of background variables on empowerment through factors such as employment, income, education, gender and age. In addition to background variables, empowerment of individuals is influenced by development policies. The opinions are about the social and economic benefits of industry in rural areas can be stated as follows. From economic perspective, rural industrialization has advantages such as, increasing farmers income, Increasing employment opportunities and also increasing job security. Such a process could accelerate rural economic empowerment and thus cause non agricultural work opportunities, reduce the income gap between rural and urban and also between rural households. Development of rural industry from the perspective of social and mental are leads to increased subjective and objective welfare, increasing of trust and development of social relationships that the result is increased social and mental empowerment of villagers.
Methodology: In this study, survey method was used to study the issue. The study population is two rural district of Yalghuz Agaj and Qaslan in the county of Qorveh in the kurdistan province. These two rural district are similar in many ways such as geographical location, number of villages under the authority, population, language, religion, possibilities and services and other characteristics. The main difference studied between two rural district is that Yalghuz Agaj with steel factory has become to an industrial rural district while Qaslan does not this feature. With Cochran formula was selected 136 households from Yalghuz Agaj rural district and 121 households from rural district of Qaslan. One person has been interviewed from each household with age range 25 to 65 year as the sample.
Results: Among the background variables studied rural empowerment relationship with age, education, income and job status were confirmed but did not confirm the relationship of rural empowerment with other background variables (sex, family size and number of employed people in household). Relationship between rural economic empowerment was approved with five background variables including age, education, income, occupational status and number of people employed in household. Relationship between social empowerment was confirmed with four background variables (age, education, income and job status) and mental empowerment is related with three background variables (age, education and job status). The important finding is that regional industrialization has no effect on any aspect of rural empowerment.
Conclusion: Yalghuz Agaj steel factory not use the rural labor force and interaction are at least possible between factory workers and villagers. In fact, the industry is as isolated part of rural community and its impacts on the rural community is at least possible. The results show that the established industry in the region could not be effective on rural empowerment. In other words the primary purposes of manufacturing industry has not been provided in the rural district. Rural industrialization requires a careful study of characteristics of industry and village. Rural industrialization should be done with the industries that were compatible with the needs of rural community and villagers can work in these industries.
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