The Spatial Variation in Women Empowerment in Jordan: A Cross Country Comparative Overview

This paper provides insight into the spatial variations in women`s empowerment across the region of Jordan through their participating in the microcredit program. The researcher used One Way ANOVA and descriptive statistics on demographic and survey data collected from 385 women loan recipients from the leading lending institutions in Jordan. Findings reveal that region is the determinant factor in empowerment; women entrepreneurs in different geographic regions exhibit different levels of empowerment. The researcher found that the social empowerment variables included education, health, social status, and the economic empowerment variables included level of housing, prosperity, saving, job creation exhibit variation in favors of the middle region except for the level of income, the researcher do not find any spatial variation. Program designers must consider geographic differences and factor endowments to facilitate women entrepreneur’s access to productive resources to achieve the MDGs of gender quality and women empowerment.