Strategic Analysis of Entrepreneurship Development in Rural Women's Microcredit Funds (Case study: Badrah County)

Introduction
In today’s Iranian society, women possess significant abilities and untapped potential. Under suitable conditions, they can play an influential role in the country’s economic, social, and cultural growth. This segment of society constitutes approximately half of the rural population. Despite their crucial contribution to rural production processes, it is essential to create a sense of belonging and opportunity for them within the community, at least as a rural community group. In Iran, according to many experts, one of the pathways to advancing rural communities is by focusing on entrepreneurship in rural areas. From this perspective, rural regions, given their available human resources and accessible assets, can serve as the most critical locus for promoting and developing entrepreneurial activities. The role of microcredit funds in poverty reduction and rural development underscores their significant importance in this context. Here’s the English translation of the provided passage: Given that rural poverty is one of the current challenges, addressing livelihood conditions in rural households and promoting entrepreneurship within rural communities becomes essential. In this regard, investigations into microcredit funds for rural women in the Badreh County, along with interviews with active experts in this field, reveal that some of these funds face issues and challenges related to entrepreneurship development. In certain cases, the problems are significant enough to require field research for identifying the necessary requirements to enhance entrepreneurial activities within such microcredit funds. Although the economic necessity and imperative of women’s participation in economic activities in rural communities are acknowledged, the desired conditions for women’s entrepreneurship have not yet been established. One contributing factor is the limited attention given by microcredit funds to creating suitable platforms for generating employment opportunities specifically for rural women. Consequently, the main research question in this study is: What are the internal factors (strengths, weaknesses), external factors (opportunities, threats), and development strategies for entrepreneurship within microcredit funds for rural women in Badreh county? 
 
Methodology
The present research, in terms of objectives, is applied and falls into the category of mixed (qualitative + quantitative) sequential exploratory studies. In this study, we first evaluated the internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities and threats) related to entrepreneurship development within microcredit funds for rural women in Badreh county using SWOT analysis. Subsequently, we prioritized and weighted these factors using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and pairwise comparison questionnaires within the software tool “Expert Choice.” The participants included 18 experts from microcredit funds for rural women and their managers in Badreh County, selected through purposive sampling. Data collection involved semi-structured individual interviews, focus groups, field observations, and note-taking. Data analysis was conducted using content analysis and based on strategic analysis and SWOT matrices. Validation of research findings also utilized diverse methods within the study community, including data collection from various locations, maximum diversity in sample selection, and control by members of the research team.
 
Findings
According to the results of the research, "the availability of family work in the entrepreneurial activities of the funds of Badreh" as the most important strength, "the presence of unskilled labor in the funds of Badreh" as the most important weakness, "the availability of conditions for collecting and processing hair and back hair" production of the city's livestock farmers" as the most important opportunity and "multiple tasks and roles of rural women members of funds at home and in the workplace" as the most important threat to the development of entrepreneurship in rural women's microcredit funds. The results showed that "encouraging and encouraging the members of the funds to start family and cooperative businesses in the field of agricultural products and handicrafts", "designing and implementing courses to improve the technical and specialized qualifications of the members of the funds in order to exploit the opportunities of agriculture and handicrafts" and "introducing and Encouraging successful female models and entrepreneurs in the field of cooperative and collaborative businesses at the national, provincial and local levels in order to change the society's view of women", are among the strategies for developing entrepreneurship in rural women's microcredit funds in Badreh.
 
Discussion and Conclusion
The results of this research clearly highlight the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and development strategies for entrepreneurship in rural women’s microcredit funds. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for policymakers and managers responsible for promoting and developing rural entrepreneurship. In the theoretical discussion, this study clarifies the concept of women’s entrepreneurship in rural microcredit funds and identifies relevant concepts and literature related to entrepreneurship development in these funds. In the practical discussion, policymakers can utilize the research results to design and implement practical programs for rural development. In this regard, the executive solutions of "Giving cooperative loans to women in the form of economic organizations to provide them with productive and employment-generating activities", "Planning and implementing income-generating activities in a group and with the participation of fund members" ", "Conducting vocational training courses and specialized trainings according to the needs of members to create entrepreneurial specialties and skills in them", "Prioritizing entrepreneurship trainings to diversify the businesses of rural women members of the funds". "Organizing provincial and national annual festivals and honoring the successful members of the rural women's microcredit funds and introducing the best provincial and national funds", "Designing and implementing television and radio programs on the topic of women entrepreneurs in national and provincial networks and introducing and Honoring and commending successful women in business, economic, socio-cultural fields", "Increasing the amount of credits granted to rural women who are members of micro-credit funds in accordance with the activities related to starting a business", "Ranking of micro-credit funds and paying more facilities to Active, successful and progressive funds", "managers and executives of rural women's microcredit funds should put together and reuse resources that have not been used so far, in addition to overcoming the limitations of resources, potentials and identify opportunities for their advancement" and "by using entrepreneurial bricolage, rural women's microcredit funds, in addition to solving the challenge of lack of resources and identifying numerous opportunities, will be able to be ready to face any environmental limitations; Therefore, they should provide innovative solutions and new opportunities to grow and improve their performance through entrepreneurial bricolage, with the entry of experimental knowledge in this way.