WOMEN AND THE RURAL WORLD. THE REASONS PUT FORWARD BY WOMEN AS TO WHY THE POPULATION CONTINUES TO FALL IN MANY PARTS OF ANDALUSIA (SPAIN)

Abstract

In Europe today, depopulation affects not only rural but also some urban areas, albeit with greatly varying intensity. Andalusia is no exception. After describing its striking territorial differences, this article analyses women’s opinions about the causes of depopulation and whether these differ depending on their place of residence or compared to men. For this purpose, we carried out 114 in-depth interviews with people with different socio-professional profiles and from different types of territory, although in this paper we study the 19 interviews with women. Our results show that there were important differences between men and women regarding the most important causes of depopulation, and within the group of women, depending on where they lived. For all the women, lack of work was the most important cause of depopulation, although there were differences in some of the other reasons put forward. These findings could be of interest to the different institutions tackling the depopulation problem.