Women's rural entrepreneurship: An integrated approach to the gender dimension

Contemporary social trends in the reconstruction of rural space, rurality and rural development impose the need for an adequate response and the willingness of local actors to actively engage in the development of the local community by mobilizing available resources, minimizing costs and maximizing productivity (which is viewed here from a sociological, not purely economic perspective). In modern societies, we are witnessing the changes that are taking place in the transformation of the rural into a modern economy, through the modernization of agricultural production, but also the expansion of the role and importance of rurality and the rural area. However, the postmodernization of rurality is accompanied by the diversification of the rural economy, but also by the need to create and implement gender-sensitive policy measures. In conditions where women, as part of the general population, comprise half of the world's population, their socio-economic development and capacity for entrepreneurship is increasingly attracting the attention of various scientific disciplines. The significance of the concept of (neo)endogenous rural development from the perspective of gender-sensitive rural policies is reflected in the expansion of the development capacities of human capital (rural women), and thus of a particular rural area.