@article{2013,title={RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN THROUGH AGRİCULTURAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATİVES},abstractNode={ABSTRACT In this study, the aim is to explore the conditions, barriers and potentials of empowerment of rural women who have founded and managed agricultural development cooperatives in their villages or districts. Empowerment of rural women tried to be analyzed with a model including psychological, economical, organizational, social and political dimensions. The sample of the study has been chosen from the list of Food, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Ministry of the agricultural development cooperations women founded and managed. These cooperatives are Ertuğrul village (Denizli), Akkaya village (Ankara), Sarıcakaya (Eskişehir) and Karabörk ve Kuşköy (Giresun) villages. Interviews have been made with the chairs and active members of these cooperatives. Despite the fact that economic problems emerged regarding state’s reduction of general agricultural subsidies in Turkey and the existence of traditional gender assumptions which restrain and limit women’s activities and social existence, these women’s cooperative could empower its members in the defined dimensions of psychological, economical, social, organizational and political at a certain extent. It has been observed that women’s cooperatives in this study mainly aimed psychological and economical empowerment. But it has been observed that the most dynamic and efficient elements of empowerment of cooperative and its members are organizational and social empowerment. It has also been dedected that these two dimensions of empowerment are crucial in the continuation of cooperatives, in the sense that cooperatives without organizational and social empowerment have difficulties to sustain their existence. As the result of research, it has been observed that the economic and psychological empowerment are the basis of empowerment, social and organizational empowerment are the most dynamic processes and political empowerment is the most hardest dimension or result to achieve even all the empowerment dimensions overlap with each other.},author={Mina FURAT},year={2013},journal={The Journal of Academic Social Science Studies}}