Empowering rural left-behind women through social participation: innovative strategies for building resilience, sustainability, and social capital

Amid China’s comprehensive rural revitalization strategy and promoting the social participation of rural left-behind women has emerged as a critical pathway towards achieving inclusive and sustainable development. However, although the social participation of left-behind women is not lacking in policy support, the practical efficacy of their participation remains limited and calls for deeper structural insights. Based on the Chinese Social Survey 2021 (CSS2021), this study contracts a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the empowerment mechanism linking social capital, Sense of gain, and social participation among rural left-behind women. The findings reveal that: (i) Social capital significantly promotes social participation through the mediating effect of political Sense of gain ( β = 0.730, p < 0.001), with a total effect value of 0.534; (ii) The mediating effect Sense of gain of livelihood related ( β = 0.145, p = 0.301) and economic Sense of gain ( β = 0.013, p = 0.848) are statistically insignificant, indicating that the political dimension plays a dominant role in empowerment; (iii) among the components of social capital, social equity (factor loading = 0.775) and social trust (factor loading = 0.660) are the most influential, while the involvement of village residents’ committees (factor loading = 0.720) emerges as a key facilitator of participatory behavior. The model has a good adaptability (RMSEA = 0.071, CFI = 0.842). Based on these results, the study proposes a practical framework of Institutional Empowerment—Political Absorption—Community Mobilization, and contributes both theoretical insights and policy support for advancing resilient and sustainable empowerment strategies for rural left-behind women.