JOURNAL OF FOOD AGRICULTURE & ENVIRONMENT, cilt.8, sa.1, ss.261-267, 2010 (SCI-Expanded)
The aim of this study was to discuss the role and importance of education and extension services to rural women development in farming systems (animal husbandry, dairy and livestock production, protected cultivation irrigated and non-irrigated field crop production, orchard growing etc.) education level, availability of local handcraft activities and job creation possibilities in Turkey. Human resource and its qualifications are very important in terms of reaching the community and economic development. The importance of women in the world in development for more than 30 years has become remarkable. Therefore, all countries including developed and developing countries have conducted some studies oriented to women in the framework of the human resource development. Although women play a major role in food production in many countries of the world, agricultural information is not effectively reaching and benefiting these key persons in the food security chain. There is a recognized need to improve agricultural extension work with rural women. A significant problem is that in many courses of study, in-service training and education in extension methodology there is insufficient examination and discussion of the roles of rural men and women in agricultural production and rural development. Too little time allocated to gender analysis and a participatory approach aimed at solving the problem of how extension work can effectively be carried out with rural women. Although women are one part of the two gender groups in the community, they have less benefit from the resources compared with men particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, indicators of rural women are much lower than women living urban area. This situation is also valid for Turkey. For this reason, extension training for adults in the framework of the adult education has been considered very important area for the people dealing with agricultural production with respect to develop qualifications of population, to provide new skills and to increase their efficiency.