Abstract:
The sociocultural practices affected the lives of rural women significantly. It has an impact in the
various domains of rural women’s lives. The central focus of the paper is to explore the
sociocultural factors affecting the lives of rural women in west Omo zone, Me’en Shasha and
Me’en Goldia Districts. A qualitative approach and a case study design were employed to
explore extensive data and uncover the hidden experiences of commercial sex workers from their
perspective. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select the study participants and
25 participants were involved in this study. A semi-structured interview guide was used to
collect data and the collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicated that
the cultural practices that affect the lives of rural are exaggerated dowry, blood compensation
(Asha), well-celebrated female birth, blurred cultural beliefs about girl’s education, putting all
the tasks at home on the women’s shoulder, marriage-related cultural barriers and male
supremacy/dominance. The social constraints that are explored in this study affecting the lives of
rural women are limited access to social activities/participation and community resources, social
stigma, women’s distorted perception, kidnapping women, rape, the inability of educated and
people in leadership positions to disengage themselves from harmful traditional practices, and
social exclusion. The major challenges experienced by rural women are economic, educational,
health-related, psychological, political, and security/safety-related. Based on the findings, the
social work interventions that promote social justice and social change are indispensable, and
social work practitioners should consider the vulnerability of rural women in their practice
settings. Consistently, all the concerned bodies need to include the issues of rural women in the
gender mainstreaming and gender-based violence response efforts.
