Philosophy and the role of cooperatives in the development of social capital. Case study: rural women’s microcredit cooperatives in Iran
Abstract
The empowerment of people in the society by synergizing the components of social capital (awareness, cohesion, trust and participation) causes transformation in that society. The aim of this study was to investigate the Philosophy and the role of cooperatives in the development of social capital. The statistical population of this study were women members of microcredit funds in Marvdasht Township in Iran. According to the database information, they include 2000 and from this number, 200 statistical samples were selected based on Cochran’s sampling formula and completely randomly. The main research tool was a questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed using the opinions of university professors and experts, and its reliability was also confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient higher than 80%. The results of the research showed that the index of social capital and components of awareness, trust, participation, cohesion and networks were weak in women. The results of the study showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the empowerment of fund members and social capital (awareness, cohesion, trust, participation and networking). Among the factors affecting social capital, risk-taking with a beta coefficient of 0.637 has been the most important factor affecting the development of social capital of women members of credit funds. The results of the research emphasize that people’s participation in cooperative activities will create a social base for people and then social identity and cohesion for them, which will ultimately lead to the empowerment of rural women.
Received: 21 May 2024
Accepted: 05 November 2024
Downloads
References
ADELEYE, O.R. OLIVO, M.L.O. and FARKAS, T. 2024. A Bibliometric Analysis of Women’s Empowerment Studies Post Sustainable Development Goal Adoption Periods (2015-2022). Sustainability, 16, 1499. https://doi.org/10.339s0/su16041499.
AKBARI, M. EBRAHIMI, M.S, AMIMI, A. M. SHAHZAD, U. JANECKOVA, K. SKLENICKA, P. MICEIKIEND, A and AZADI, H. 2023. Performance of rural cooperatives’ production in Iran: Implications for sustainable development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 405: 136836. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136836.
AKHTER, J. and CHENG, K. 2020. Sustainable Empowerment Initiatives among Rural Women through Microcredit Borrowings in Bangladesh. Sustainability, 12, 2275. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12062275.
AMERI, H. MAHAMI-OSKOUEI, M. SHARAFI, S. SAADTJOO, S. MIRI, M, ARAB-ZOZANI, M. 2023. Investigating the strengths and weaknesses of online education during COVID-109 pandemic from the perspective of professors and students of medical universities and proposing solutions: A qualitative study. Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 51(1):94-102. https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.21691. Epub 7. PMID: 36341534; PMCID: PMC9877551.
ARYANA, A., DASTYAR, Z. and TAVASOLI, A. 2020. Entrepreneur women’s role in the development and evolution of the country (Case Study: Hormozgan province). Karafan. J. 16: 101-120.
AZIMI, N., ALIBAYGI, A. and PAPZAN, A. 2022. Assessing rural women’s empowerment in Kermanshah Township. Hum. Geog. Res. 55(2), 119-134.
DENG, W. HENDRIKSE, G and LIANG, Q. 2021. “Internal social capital and the life cycle of agricultural cooperatives” Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 301-323.
DINNESEN, M.S., OLSZEWSKI, A. BREIT-SMITH, A. and GUO, Y. 2020. Collaborating With an Expert Panel to Establish the Content Validity of an Intervention for Preschoolers With Language Impairment. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 41(2), 86-99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525740118795158.
EBRAHIMI, MOHAMMAD SADEGH, and MOJTABA GHAEDIYAN. 2021. “Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Commitment in Agricultural Cooperatives: Evidence from Iran”. International Association of Cooperative Law Journal, n.º 59 (December), 263-83. https://doi.org/10.18543/baidc-59-2021pp263-283.
ESKANDARI, M. HOMAEE, M. MAHMODI, S. et al. 2015. Optimizing landfill site selection by using land classification maps. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 7754-7765. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4182-7.
FARHZADEH, M. and ALIHOSENI, A. 2023. The role of women in policy-making and decision-making in European national and regional parliaments. Woman in Development & Politics, 21(3), 661-691. https://doi.org/10.22059/jwdp.2023.349998.1008264.
FEIZABADI, H. MAJDI, A., HASANI-DARMYAN, G. and VAKILI, H. 2023. Investigating the role of cooperatives in the reproduction of social capital and its relationship with the productivity. Social Capital Management, 10(2), 177-195. https://doi.org/10.22059/jscm.2023.349219.2345.
GAUTAM, R.K. and MISHRA, K. 2016. Study on rural women entrepreneurship in India: Issues and challenges. Int. J. Appl. Res. 2: 33-36.
GHASEMI, M., BADSAR, M. and FALAHATI, L. 2023. Investigating the Role of Psychological Variables on the Rural Women’s Empowerment in Environmental Conservation. Environmental Researches, 13(26), 335-354. https://doi.org/10.22034/eiap.2023.170002.
GOLKAR-FARD, M.J. 2019. Relationship between entrepreneurship and empowerment dimensions of rural women in Fars province. J. Entrep Strateg. Agric 6: 1-10.
GOPALAN, M. ROSINGER, K. and AHN, J. B. 2020. Use of Quasi-Experimental Research Designs in Education Research: Growth, Promise, and Challenges. Review of Research in Education, 44(1), 218-243. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X20903302.
HENDRIK, S. 2019. The role of financial inclusion in driving women’s economic empowerment. J. Dev. Pract. 29: 1029-1038.
KARIMI, M. S. SOHAILI, K. and EBRAHIMI, F. 2020. Relationship between women’s education and economic growth (case study selected Islamic countries). JMSP. 7: 646-669.
KHALILI, N., ARSHAD, M., FARAJZADEH, Z. et al. 2021. Does drought affect smallholder health expenditures? Evidence from Fars Province, Iran. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 765-788. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00608-1.
KHAN, S. 2016. Women’s empowerment through poverty alleviation: a sociocultural and politico-economic assessment of conditions in Pakistan. Paper presented at the European Virtual Conference on Management Sciences and Economics.
KHEIRI, A. HEIDARAABADI, A. and RAH,ANI. 2021. The Role of Cooperatives in Socio-Economic Development among Youth of Qom Province, Sociological Studies of Youth Journal, 12(41), 75-94. magiran.com/p2298437.
KUSTEPELI, Y. GULCAN, Y. YERCAN, M. et al. 2023. The role of agricultural development cooperatives in establishing social capital. Ann Reg Sci 70, 681-704. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-019-00965-4.
MCCARHTY, L. 2017. Empowering women through corporate social responsibility: A feminist Foucauldian critique. Bus. Ethics Q. J. 27: 603-631.
NILSSON, J. 2023. "Chapter 6: Social capital and governance of agricultural cooperatives". In Handbook of Research on Cooperatives and Mutuals. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved May 20. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802202618.00015.
RACHAEL, S. PIEROTI, R. S. FRIEDSON-RIDENOUR, S and OLAYIWOLA. O. 2022. Women farm what they can manage: How time constraints affect the quantity and quality of labor for married women’s agricultural production in southwestern Nigeria,World Development, 152, 105800. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.105800.
SAZ-GIL, I. BRETOS, I. and DIAZ-FONCEA, M. 2021. Cooperatives andSocial Capital: A Narrative Literature Review and Directions for FutureResearch. Sustainability, 13, 534. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020534.
SEN, A. 1994. Capability and well-being73. 30: 270-293.
STOOP, E., BRANDSEN, T. and HELDERMAN, J.-K. 2021. “The impact of the cooperative structure on organizational social capital”, Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 548-565. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-08-2020-0063.
TABER, K.S. 2018. The Use of Cronbach’s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education. Res Sci Educ 48, 1273-1296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2.
VALENTINOV, V. and, ILIOPOULOS, C. 2021. Social capital in cooperatives: an evolutionary Luhmannian perspective. J Evol Econ 31, 1317-1331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-021-00744-5.
WEI W, SARKER, T. Żukiewicz-SOBCZAK. W, ROY. R, ALAM, G.M.M, RABBANY, M.G, HOSSAIN, M.S, AZIZI, N. 2021. The Influence of Women’s Empowerment on Poverty Reduction in the Rural Areas of Bangladesh: Focus on Health, Education and Living Standard. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 27;18(13):6909. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18136909. PMID: 34199117; PMCID: PMC8293807.
WULANDHARI, N.B.I, GOLGECI, I, MISHRA, N. et al. .2022. Exploring the role of social capital mechanisms in cooperative resilience, Journal of Business Research, 143, 375-386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.01.026.
ZAMANIMOGHADAM, M. and AFSHANI. S. A. 2021. Empowerment of Female Heads of Households in Iran: A Systematic Review. refahj. 21(80), 45-80. http://refahj.uswr.ac.ir/article-1-3465-fa.html.
Copyright (c) 2024 University of Deusto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Last update: 29/06/2026
The authors are advised to read their rights carefully. We believe this approach ensures a fair agreement for both parties. These instructions should be read in conjunction with the Ethical Guidelines and the Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright of the journal "Boletín de la Asociación Internacional de Derecho Cooperativo (BAIDC)".
1. Authorship and Ethics
By submitting their manuscripts to Boletín de la Asociación Internacional de Derecho Cooperativo (BAIDC), the authors accept and undertake to comply with the conditions of publication without the need to sign an additional transfer agreement with the Publisher (University of Deusto). In doing so, they guarantee that their work is unpublished in any form, original, and does not breach BAIDC’s Ethical Guidelines or the rights of third parties, and that no licences have been or will be granted that are incompatible with the rights granted to the Publisher.
The authors assume full and exclusive responsibility for the content of the study and formally declare that they have no conflicts of interest that affect the integrity of the research.
2. Publisher’s Rights
By submitting the manuscript, the authors agree to its publication under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Consequently, they grant the Publisher the exclusive, royalty-free and worldwide right of first publication, editing, layout and exploitation of the article. This grant authorises the Publisher to distribute, sub-license and index the work in any format, medium, database or institutional repository, for the purposes of promotion and scientific dissemination.
3. Copyright
The authors retain the intellectual property rights to their article and retain the right to distribute and use their work for teaching purposes, future research or personal archiving, provided that the original publication in the Journal is cited. They are also permitted to republish in other media, provided that a (foot)note is included with the full reference to BAIDC (including the DOI, where available) and no explicit endorsement of the Journal and/or Publisher is implied.
4. Open access
BAIDC is an open-access journal; this means that it is freely and fully accessible in its entirety immediately upon publication of its content. However, in accordance with the licence mentioned above, the authors of the articles must always be properly cited; and both commercial use and any modification intended for distribution will require the express prior written permission of the rights holder.
More details are available under the section “Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright”.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
1.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
