RURAL WOMEN'S PERCEPTION OF CLIMATE CHANGES PHENOMENEN IN GHARBIA GOVERNORATE

People everywhere experience changes and events that impact theirlives. Knowing how they perceive, react, and adapt to climate changes andevents is helpful in developing strategies to support adaptation to climatechange. This study aimed mainly to identifying the level of the perception ofrural women to climate changes in Gharbia governorate; assess the
relationships between the studied independent variables and the level of theperception of rural women to climate hanges; and determine the contributionof the independent variables of the study in explaining the variance of thelevel of the perception of rural women to climate changes. This study carriedout at four districts in Gharbia governorate which are Mahalla Al-kubra, KafEl-Zayat, Qutour, and Santa. One village was selected randomly from eachdistrict which are El-Segaiya, Edshay, Meet El-Sheikh, and Meet Ghazal,respectively. Field work included the selection of a sample of 120 rural
women, 30 from each village. Random samples of 113 rural women werechosen which represents 94% of the target sample.Data were collected from sample persons by personal interviewquestionnaire. Collected data were coded and analyzed using the SPSSpackage. Frequencies, percentages, means, Person correlation coefficient,Alpha, and multiple linear regression (step wise) techniques were used fordata analysis and presentation.The main findings of the study could be summarized as follows:1- About 89.4% of respondents have low level of perception of climatechanges, 10.6% of them have medium level of perception of climate changes.2- There were significant bivariate relationships between education level,professional status, number of sources of information, media exposure,informal social participation, mental lasticity, leadership self-esteem and thelevel of the perception of rural women to climate changes; while there were no
significant bivariate relationships between age, family size, family income,family home level and the level of the perception of rural women to climatechanges.3- The independent variables of the study combined explained about 26,4% ofhe variance of the level of the perception of rural women to climate changes.The two independent variables of professional status, and number of sourcesof information together explained 19% of the variance of the level of theperception of rural women to climate changes.