The Role of a Women's Cooperative to Improve the Welfare of Women Coffee Farmers in Bener Meriah Regency, Indonesia

Abstract

A women's cooperative is a form of women's empowerment in improving the economy of pre-prosperous women, where women are a marginalized group and face difficulty getting access to business capital loans, impacting their welfare. The presence of a women's cooperative is a solution to open access to capital provision for underprivileged women to improve their standard of living. Women's cooperatives have a very active role in the Bener Meriah Regency because they are managed directly by women, and all empowered members are women. Role theory and community empowerment theory are used to analyze the research results. The research paradigm used is the constructivism paradigm with a qualitative methodological approach. The results of this study suggest that cooperatives have an essential role in empowering the community, especially women as a marginalized group, to revive the household economy. The women's cooperative in Bener Meriah Regency is a cooperative in which all management is carried out by women, from coaching farmers to marketing agricultural products, especially the Gayo arabica coffee commodity. The women's cooperative addressed was Gayo Women's Coffee Cooperative (KOKOWAGAYO), which has been successful in empowering the economy of coffee farmers to carry out marketing to international markets through the export of coffee commodities.