The role of women's cooperatives on local economic development: The case of Erzurum

Local Economic Development is defined as a participatory process that aims to activate the potential for growth, competitiveness, and job creation in the local economy by effectively, efficiently, and consciously using local resources and supporting collaboration with local actors to design and implement a common development policy. In this process, one of the important actors contributing to local development is women's cooperatives. Women cooperatives play a significant role not only in the development of their regions but also in achieving gender and opportunity equality in society. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to determine the impact of women's cooperatives on local economic development. A field survey has been conducted with women's cooperatives located in Erzurum. The questionnaire survey has been conducted with 16 women's cooperatives and 173 cooperative members in Erzurum, with the approval of the Erzurum Technical University- Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Board on December 29, 2022. In the study, it has been used the exploratory factor analysis to define factor structure of the statements related to the role of women's cooperatives on local economic development, and eight factors have been identified. These factors have been entitled as follows: contribution on Economic and Social Life, contribution on Socialization of Women, contribution on Regional Investments, contribution on Women Employment, contribution on Household Income, contribution on Personal Development of Women, contribution on Local Production and contribution on Local Products. In addition, it has been used the Mann-Whitney-U Test to define whether the attitudes of the participants towards these eight factors, obtained as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, exhibited a statistically significant difference among groups according to the location, type and years' professional experience of women's cooperatives. The analysis results have determined that the attitudes of the participants towards the local economic development factors have not showed a statistically significant difference according to the location and type of the women's cooperative. However, according to the years' professional experience of the cooperative, it has been found a statistically significant difference on the contributions of women's cooperative to socialization of women, local investments, women employment, household income, personal development of women and local production. Keywords: Local Economic Development, Women Entrepreneurship, Women's Cooperatives, Erzurum.