Conclusion

This dissertation talked about "women empowerment", it must be taken into consideration that women do not constitute consistent category, so for different groups of women their empowerment priorities are not identical. For many women it means providing the necessary needs such as education, skills enhancement, and practicing income generating activities.

In Alotom village the definition of the term empowerment differed from men to women perspectives. The Women in their empowerment definition focused on education attainment, mobility, decision-making, and self-esteem. While men in their definition talked about the education that is in their favor, where women shall be useful in household. In addition to respecting the family honor, male relatives, and getting permission before going out.

Association members (boards’ member and members) gave me the feeling of their trust and proud because they have something only for them which make them differ then the other women in the village (non-members) as well as men. Literacy offers the space for women to practice their right in education, build up their capacities bringing new information skills to them. Furthermore literacy enables women to move out by going to the class. IGA granted the women the authority to be responsible of running and managing the IGA, at the same time it gave them the chance how to keep the sustainability of the IGA by taking into consideration the circumstances that will help the IGA to continue running. Also the IGA was the way of creating females job opportunities in village (the teacher, and the poultry supervisor).

It was a good experience to examine the MDG Goals 2&3 in rural Yemen, which proved that education is an important factor that leads to empowering women, but it may have a great impact in applying long term programs.

Gender relations have changed during the last five years, now it’s improved than before and become somehow acceptable by both men and women. Men change is not that big but at least it is better than before. Men have also been so cooperative and supportive in terms of educating their women. Some of the men blame the negative culture and traditions which deal with women in more conservative way but they hope that in the future things will be much better.

As this research focused on women empowerment from local men and woman perspectives, it did not consider boys and girls feedback about this issue. This might be a good area to investigate in future studies.