Economic Empowerment from a Gender Perspective: An Assessment of the Situations Informal Self-Employed Women and Support Interventions by Local Governments, A Case Study of Jimma Town
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Date
2008-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Empowerment, commonly of the poor and/or women, is considered as a crosscutting issue in
developmental work apropos poverty reduction and gender equality. Closely linked to this vista,
the study is conducted with the main objective of cross-examining the local government’s stab at
incorporating gender perspective in economic empowerment endeavors. A particular emphasis
is thus, given to examination of the panorama of self-employed women in the informal sector and
their access to productive resources and assets. Thereupon, the status of the informal self-
employed women is appraised apropos livelihood engagements and labor, access to relevant
information, collective capabilities and its benefits, financial support and access to credit, and
awareness on salient policies and individual agency.
To comply with the objective of the study, data is collected from both the informal self-employed
women and local government offices that are directly pursuing economic empowerment
objectives. To this end, primary data is obtained through questionnaire survey, in-depth
interview with local officials, and personal observation with some informal interviews.
Secondary data are also collected from local offices and other sources.
The study’s finding shows that the local government’s effort in incorporating gender perspective
in to economic empowerment programmes is quite low, even though a relative improvement is
exhibited. In particular, the self-employed women in the informal sector are economically
disempowered as they are constrained by limited or poor access to productive assets.
Furthermore, the local supports available are also the one that reinforce women’s traditional
engagements that hardly yield a better income to achieve growth and improvement. Besides,
constraints including lack of working premise, working capital, credit access, excessive domestic
responsibilities are found as some of the prominent factors that erode the earnings of the
informal self-employed women.
In general, to truly realize the empowerment of women and the poor women in the informal
sector, a long way move forward must be made. Accordingly, to see a turnaround, policy
implementers need to strictly adhere to existing policy and regulatory frameworks that enhances
women’s wellbeing apart from devising practical and feasible ways of unraveling the constraints
of women engaging in activities with diminutive rewards
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Keywords
Local governments, Interventions