Research was conducted to study the level of knowledge and practices among rural women regarding the use of waste and conservation of the environment in the province of Behera and some of the some of its related factors.
The study was based on form and personal interview for the collection of field data of the selected rural women sample which was composed of 260 in number. Then from the total recipients, 5% of the rural women with their husbands were randomly selected out of the eight villages of the four centers of the province of Behera, namely: Kafr El-Dawar, Abu Homous, Damanhur and Itay El-Baroud.
frequency and table presentation, percentages, arithmetic mean and standard deviation, simple correlation coefficient ,were used to present and discuss results .
The following are most important findings:
1. Level of knowledge of the rural women in the preservation of the environment showed that the largest proportion of rural women was from the middle-class section; it was in 45% proportion. Whereas the proportion of women with limited level of knowledge was 31.5% and with a high level of knowledge was 23.5% from the total number of women.
2. The majority of rural women (74.5%) belong to the categories of women with level of practices that are most harmful and produced medium damage to the environment.
3. There is a direct correlation between the level of knowledge related to the use of waste and conservation of the environment and the total educational attainment of the rural women and their husbands, the degree of urban cultural receptiveness, and the number of information sources. Whereas the relationships were not significant with the rest of the independent variables studied.
4. There is a correlation between the level of practices of rural women related to the use of waste and conservation of the environment and the total educational attainment that were studied together with their husbands, the degree of urban cultural receptiveness, and the number of sources of information.
5. The most important reasons that limit the ability of rural women, from their own point of view, to protect the environment is the lack of a healthy means to get rid of waste, the backward traditional methods of waste disposal, and the lack of knowledge about the correct methods of waste disposal.