Studying Problem of Poverty from the Standpoint of Rural Women and Girls (Case study: Gonbad Pirmohammad village-Ilam Province)

Poverty, in general and women’s poverty in particular is among social problems which has been subject to be mitigated through measures. The results of statistics based studies show that poverty and injustice is more prevalent in rural areas than cities and more common among women than men. The research aims to study the social and cultural causes of women’s poverty through the qualitative approach based on Grounded theory. In this research, sampling has been done purposively. Participants who were interviewed as a group in this research included housewives, women householders and young girls under the aegis of Imam Khomeini Relief Committee. The main questions of this research were: what have been the determinants of poverty from the view of rural girls and women? What have been their individual strategies to tackle the problem of poverty? What have been the aftermaths? The Findings of this study showed that social ignorance, clan clashes, preference to men in the family, fatalism, intergenerational poverty, highly populated families, educational limitations, unemployment and imposed war and its aftermath have been the reasons of poverty from the view points of participants. The result showed that cultural and social factors are important causes of poverty.