Abstract
Keywords
The Role of Rural ICT offices in the Social Development of Rural Women Shahreza County
F. Farhady[1]
MA in Rural Development, University of Omran & Tosee, Hamedan, Iran
M.S. Ebrahimi
Assistant Proff of MA in Rural Development, University of Omran & Tosee, Hamedan, Iran
Abstract
The aim of this research was to study the role of rural ICT offices in social development of rural women. The data collected through questionnaire. The statistical population of this study consisted of 5018 literate, over 15- year -old rural, women living in 16 rural areas facilitated by ICT offices in Shahreza city in which 190 rural women selected as sample population by using Cochran formula and the stratified random sampling for selecting samples. Content validity of the questionnaire was achieved through experts' view and its validity estimated 0.74 by using KMO. Reliability of the research instrument confirmed through Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha estimated 0.79- 0.86. SPSS software was used to analyze the gathered data. The results of the research showed that the most awareness of rural women was in “basic services” and the highest rate of their referring to ICT offices was to receive basic services. The impact of ICT on the social development of rural women can be mentioned in some aspects such as: increasing awareness and participation of rural women, improving quality of provided services in rural area, social justice of rural women and the consent of their position ;respectively. The results of correlation analysis showed that there is a significant positive relationship between social development of rural women and independent variables such as: education, number of traveling in year and financial independence at the 0.05 level, the awareness about ICT services and use ICT services at the 0.01 level. The regression analysis result indicates that three significant variables affecting the dependent variable of social development of rural women are: percentage of rural women's financial independence, awareness about services of ICT offices and the rate of their referring to ICT offices for receiving ICT services.
Keyword: ICT offices, ICT Services, Social development, Rural women, Shahreza County.