Gender Needs Awareness and Gender Asymmetry: An Analysis of a Rural Women Survey in Mountainous Areas of South-eastern Spain

Javier Calatrava-Requena and Sayadi Samir

No 24646, 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Achieving gender symmetry in rural areas is an important target for the European Union. There is no shortage of talent, ideas and energy amongst women in rural areas, nor are there legal constraints. However, a range of cultural obstacles still stand in the way of their full participation in rural development (the persistence of traditional views about women's and men's roles in society, etc.) particularly in the Mediterranean areas. The integration of equal opportunities will no longer be a choice, but it will be an obligation in the design and implementation of rural development programmes and projects. Some European initiatives (NOW, EQUAL, LEADER, etc.) have already been taken to improve rural women's opportunities to participate more actively in economic and public life. In this context, surveying and the data collection will be considered an important preliminary step in the implementation of gender symmetry-focused development policies. In this paper, after briefly discussing the different gender paradigms in rural development, some results of a survey conducted on 304 rural women living in mountainous rural areas of the province of Granada (Southern Spain) are presented. The position of rural women as regards employment, family, socio-cultural, institutional matters, etc., is described. Then women's perception and awareness regarding both practical and strategic gender needs in the area are analysed. Factors related to how women stand with respect to gender needs have been identified using the probit regression model. From the above results, some conclusions have finally been drawn that could be helpful for designing strategies to achieve a better level of gender symmetry in the region, focusing sustainable rural development on a "gender planning" approach.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/24646/files/cp05sa04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaae05:24646

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.24646

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().