Abstract: It is thought that the development of human societies in general and rural communities in particular depends on how well they succeed in improving the status of women and tackling the problems that hinder the ability of women to fulfill their roles properly. This is because rural women assume various responsibilities and play many roles. The performance of all those roles is not always satisfactory. This means that there is a shortage that needs to be corrected. Two perspectives are initially taken to conceptualize this situation. The first perspective considers rural women to be non equipped for their roles. The second perspective argues that there are widespread social problems prevent the good performance of rural women.
This study emphasizes the second perspective mentioned above, and tries to identify problems facing rural women in rural traditional and modern communities and hinder their role performance,
The objectives of this study were stated as follows:
1- Identifying the degree to which rural women in traditional and new communities suffer from problems of poverty, ignorance, illness, husband's dominance, dominance of mother- in- law, child bearing, violence, absence of husband, tight dwelling, role- conflict, kinship conflicts, discrimination, avoiding organizational participation, lack of security, lack of confidence in others, disorganization of service organizations, shopping, fear of contacting men, lack of jobs, low wages, alienation, and lack of services.
2- Identifying the differences between women in traditional and modern communities in suffering from the problems of poverty, ignorance, illness, husband's dominance, dominance of mother- in- law, child bearing, violence, absence of husband, tight dwelling, role conflict, kinship conflicts, discrimination, avoiding organizational participation, lack of security, shopping, fear of contacting men, lack of jobs, low wages, alienation, and lack of services.
3- Assessing the bivariate relationships between the independent variables of age, educational level, educational level of husband, age at marriage, family size, family monthly income, agricultural land ownership, agricultural land rental, ownership of farm animals, level of family dwelling, ownership of home appliances, informal social participation, mass media exposure, and traditionalism, and the score of suffering from the problems of poverty, ignorance, illness, husband's dominance, dominance of mother- in- law, child bearing, violence, absence of husband, tight dwelling, role conflict, kinship conflicts, discrimination, avoiding organizational participation, lack of security, shopping, fear of contacting men, lack of jobs. Low wages, alienation, and lack of services.
4- Identifying the differences in suffering from the problems of poverty, ignorance, illness, husband's dominance, dominance of mother- in- law, child bearing, violence, absence of husband, tight dwelling, avoiding organizational participation, lack of security, shopping, fear of contacting men, lack of jobs, low wages, alienation, and lack services. Between rural women classified according to occupation, husband's occupation, family type, husband having other wives, and having previous marriage instance.
Rural communities in kafr El-Sheikh governorate were chosen as site for the study. El-Riyadh district was purposively selected because of the existence of several modern rural communities. The two modem communities of Mubarak 'El-Gadidah and El-Fayrouz were purposively taken as new communities. Sidi salem district was purposively selected as a district with only traditional rural communities. The two communities of El-Waraq and Kafr-El-Masharqah were randomly drawn as sample communities, The study population was delineated to be all families having permanent residence in the four selected villages. The population size was 13351 families. An independent subsample was decided to be drawn from each sample community. Using Krejcie and Morgan formula, the target subsample size was 195, 140, 119, and 104 families for El-Waraq, Kafr-El-Mashargah, Mubarak Al-Gadidah, and El-Fayrouz, respectively. The wife in each sample family was considered to be the unit of response and the unit of analysis at the same time.
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