Year: 2016
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study attempts to analyze the impact of microfinance services in empowering the Egyptian rural women. The study is also meant to obtain insights regarding factors empowering rural women through microfinance services and which factors influences most and to what extent. For that, 205 respondents out of 248 questionnaires yielding a response rate of 82.66% residing in rural areas of Egypt. Rural areas were approached with structured questionnaire by following a non-probabilistic convenience sampling technique. After computing the reliability of scales, correlation and multiple regressions was used to test hypotheses through SPSS version 16.The results indicate that four of the five factors (i.e. socio-economic status up gradation, autonomy for life choices, women position in the family/society and positive approach towards child development) have significant impact on rural women empowerment. The limitations of this study is due to a sample size of 205 Egyptian Rural women, it is recommended to increase the sample size to have more statistically reliable results that can be generalized. The efficiency and the number of the questions should be increased to improve Cronbach Alpha. It is costly to randomly select a bigger population of areas to be surveyed in rural Egypt. The limitation of the study relates to the population of rural women only used for the study, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The findings of the study are likely to be important to microfinance institutions and government in designing policy to empower rural Egyptian women socially and economically.
Author: Hala El Hadidi
Institution: British University in Egypt
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2510496664