| Abstract: | Women in Ethiopia occupy low status in the society in spite of their share of
contributions to the wellbeing of the family and community affairs. Women have
experienced lower socio-economic status and hence are marginalized from making
decision at all level. Women are facing multiple forms of deprivation, gender based
discrimination, lack of protection of basic human rights, victims of violence, lack of
access to productive resources, less education and training, access to basic health
services is limited, and low employment opportunity. Women constitute proportionally
a larger group of the labor force in various economic sectors. Therefore, economic
development is unthinkable without the participation of women. However, Ethiopian
women have not been able to equally benefit from the nation’s wealth, because their
participation in the economy has been duly undervalued.
The study had attempted to explore economic status of the rural women on Tabia
Aynalem and Genfel. Data is collected through different data collection methods. For
this purpose questionnaires were used as an instrument to collect data on the economic
status of the rural women. It is composed of close and open ended questions. Since the
study includes respondents with relatively low academic status, the questionnaires are
translated into Tigrigna so that certain inconvenience and communication barriers will
be avoided. Interview which is unstructured as a method of data collection was also
implemented to collect data from the sample respondents.
The finding of the study indicates that since they are dependent on their husband
economically, the rural women have no say on issue of common concern, but things
have changed. Regarding the educational status of the rural women, the finding reveals
that the majority of the respondents are found to be illiterate because of early marriage,
lack of money and knowhow of the benefit of being educated and lack of education
center in their surroundings. Most of the rural women have access to agricultural land
but the main problem they face was not ownership right of land but to be beneficiary
from the fruits of their land. Many women didn’t have training of entrepreneurship to
improve their income. |
