دراسة اقتصادية للأنشطة الإنتاجية و التسويقية التي تمارسها المرأة المعيلة في الريف المصري

الملخص EN

The new sustainable Development agenda 2030, as well as The Egypt Vision 2030, dedicated a special attention to women in sustainable development and particularly to women heading households with their double responsibility to care for themselves and their family needs and expenditures without reliance on husband or close relatives (brother or father) if any.

Thus, under this category, fall widows and divorced women as well as married women but with husband suffering a chronic disability that prevents him from working to meet their family needs or just too stingy to provide the necessary resources.

Therefore, the problems facing women under different categories are diverse and vary according to different societies, customs, traditions, type of work and conditions.

In Egypt today, there are more than 12 Million (38 % of female population) women feeding and caring for 30% of households countrywide.

The aim of the present research is to review and assess the most important productive and marketing activities carried out by rural women heading their families and seeking to improve the family income, increase the standard of living and lift them out of poverty.

These activities have been evaluated in terms of efficiency and the return on investment.

For this purpose a set of economic criteria were used to assess the degree of success of the women’ projects.

This includes the return on investment and the recovery period.

For the first cluster of projects/activities, it is clear that garlic production and marketing project has the highest return estimated to five folds of the invested capital total recovered only after over 2% of the year.

This project is seconded by production and marketing of coriander and dill.

While poultry project had the lowest return (20%) and the longest recovery estimated to 5 years.

As for the second cluster of activities, it turns out that the production and marketing of Mulukhya had the highest return (four folds the capital) and the shortest recovery time respectively (25% of a year period) followed by the popcorn project that had an average return three folds of the capital after a recovery period of 33% of the year business.

Eggs marketing project has the lowest return in this cluster with the return on investment was about 25% and a recovery period of 4 years.

The assessment of the third cluster of projects showed that the production and marketing of ice molds/cubes has the highest return as all inputs are optimally transformed into outputs and therefore the yield size was constant.

In terms of economic efficiency, it was highest for the watercress and cheese project (80%).

Yet, it did not achieve full efficiency because (the efficiency index is less than 1).

Thus, the yield size is increasing and as a result there is a need to increase costs by 20% for both commodities to be optimal.

While the least economically efficient projects were the butter project with around 16% and increased yields size.

Therefore, there is a need to raise costs by 84% to reach the optimum size.

Using the data envelopment analysis to assess the economic efficiency of these activities, the results show that in case of constant return scale, the production and marketing of garlic achieve the relative efficiency (equal to one) followed by the coriander, dill and parsley activities with 83%, which means that the yield size is decreasing and there is a need to reduce the costs of the production by 17% so as to reach optimum volume.

Study Recommendations Within the framework of Egypt's vision for sustainable development 2030, women's empowerment and the preservation of their rights, especially economic empowerment through support for job opportunities and secure income for them and their families in view of the relative weight of this category in Egyptian society.

Despite the government efforts either through solidarity projects funded by the Ministry of Social Solidarity or dignity and guarantee to access loans by Bank Nasr and other institutions in support of small activities.

The study also recommends the following: * To continue the provision of subsidized loans or interest free credits targeting in women heads of households.

* To providing marketing facilities for the activities dedicated to this category.

* Organize marketing fairs and exhibitions for these activities in villages and cities.