Enhancing rural women's livelihood sustainability through medicinal plants cultivation: A hybrid SWOT–Fuzzy AHP–TOWS analysis.

Rural women in developing countries often face significant barriers to employment, income generation, and access to productive resources. In Iran, medicinal plants (MPs) cultivation offers a sustainable pathway toward economic empowerment and livelihood resilience. This study develops and prioritizes strategies to enhance the livelihood sustainability of rural women through MPs cultivation using an integrated SWOT (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats)–Fuzzy AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process)–TOWS (Threats– Opportunities – Weaknesses– Strengths) model. Data collected from experts in agricultural and rural development sectors were analyzed to evaluate internal and external strategic factors. The strategic space analysis revealed that internal strengths (0.473) outweighed weaknesses (0.128), while external opportunities (0.325) surpassed threats (0.092), indicating that the favorable strategic space (O + S = 0.798) dominated the risky space (T + W = 0.220). Twelve strategies were formulated and prioritized, among which two emerged as most critical: (1) economic empowerment of rural women through home-based MPs processing enterprises and (2) promotion of greenhouse-based cultivation as a sustainable alternative to wild harvesting. The findings highlight the importance of leveraging indigenous knowledge, improving branding and packaging, and strengthening institutional support to achieve sustainable rural livelihoods. The proposed hybrid framework provides a replicable analytical tool for policymakers to design context-specific interventions linking women’s empowerment, biodiversity conservation, and rural economic sustainability.