A Sociological Research on Social Participation of Rural WOOlen of Aghkand Village of Mianeh Township

Participation is a process in which people involved to make endeavors aiming at a commongoal; and they do this actively, freely with awareness and accountability. womenparticipation as one of the principles for development can be studied from differentperspectives. the objective of the present study is to investigate social and cultural factorsinfluencing social participation of rural women in the developmental process.the theories of experts in modernism domain in general and feminism theories likeliberal feminism in particular, are theoretical bases of this study.this research was conducted through interviews (during october 2002 to may 2003) inone of the villages of azerbaijan sharghi province; where 155 women with the average of15-60 were selected as subjects whose answers were then analyzed.the average rate of social participation of rural women based on this research is shownto be low and only 4 percent of respondents had a high participation rate.their type of participation was mainly traditional and religious including participation inbirth anniversary, religious get-to-gether and health houses; it in fact manifests a kind ofpassive participation. however, based on the data there was a correlation between the socialparticipation of rural women and variables relevant to women's attitude and self-concept(internal factors), age, education (background factors), their access level to urban centers,and the media (structural factors).