When women are empowered and can claim their rights and access to land, leadership, opportunities and choices, economies grow, food security is enhanced and prospects are improved for current and future generations
~Michelle Bachelet Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UN Women.
They are the backbone of the development of rural economies. They constitute 43% of the world’s agricultural labor force, which rises to 70% in some countries. Women’s agricultural associations are an important economic, social and cultural institution because they promote the development of collective action of women, contribute substantially to the development of local resources and provide additional income to rural families. They maintain and promote the cultural heritage and create population concentration on their hearths.
The cooperatives play a meaningful role in uplifting the socio-economic conditions of their members and their local communities. They represent a model of economic enterprise that places high regard for democratic and human values and respect for the environment. Most of the these cooperatives are viable, since women exhibit enviable entrepreneurship notably collective and active both in urban and suburban areas and in mountains, foothills areas and island areas where women are unemployed or underemployed, and face outdated perceptions, which slowly overturned through their business successful activation.
But why are they so important?
Because of many reasons such as:
- They have an important role in the development of rural and local development since they ensure employment for their members and also provide local products of excellent quality.
- Τhe model of these cooperatives give employment outlet for women who face unemployment and exclusion, especially in rural areas.
- Women gain confidence, learn to cooperate with other members, exploit and highlight their existing abilities and skills.
- They have an important benefit that is women’s ability to transform the private domestic economy into public earning.
- They urge women to exit house and from the exclusive family care profession, which may combine family care and chores to the involvement in the social process and interaction and cooperation with other people.
- They contribute in fighting female unemployment and underemployment, obtaining occupation, income, insurance and pension rights, creation of a capable workforce and participation in local economic and social development.
It is clear that women cooperatives could be a key tool to exit from the crisis. The good practices at European, but also worldwide, proving that the economy coming from women cooperatives is not utopian or unattainable, but instead is effective and create social, economic and environmental benefits to individuals, local communities and the grand total. In Balkan regions while the whole cooperative movement in these economies remains weak, they are expected to continue to grow in such areas as credit, agricultural supply and marketing, and even a renascent consumer cooperative sector.
In fact women cooperatives seem to uplift the agricultural economy in Balkans since:
- The active participation of the women cooperatives in general issues of the national economy with a particular view to the economic development of the specific area is extremely important.
- The women cooperative economy represents a stability convention.
- Some women agricultural cooperatives are now among the most significant enterprises in these countries and are part of the global market. The strategies and structures now dominated by purely economic factors, while women agricultural cooperatives play an important role and influence in national agricultural policy.
- The rural women cooperatives assume concentration, packaging standardization, storage, maintenance, transportation and sale inside or outside the agricultural enterprises of the products of their members.
- Women cooperatives support a protective function for the jobs of hundreds of thousands of farmers and small entrepreneurs who manage to remain on the market thanks to economies of women cooperatives.
- The basic objective of the rural economy and therefore of women cooperatives is to reduce the cost of production and selling them at reasonable prices, so that consumers have the goods they prefer to the quantities they want, with as many as possible lower price.
- Several women cooperatives are connected to the processing of agricultural products boosting by this way the local employment and income in their region, with export activities and a strong presence in the local market.
- Industrialization of some goods in demand of larger quantities and as a result the further development of rural sector.
