Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Gender Mainstreaming Among Employees at Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, Ethiopia
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Date
2023-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main purpose of the study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices on gender mainstreaming of staff who are working in Ministry of Women and Social Affairs in Addis Ababa. The study followed mixed research approach, involving both qualitative and quantitative methods, and descriptive research design was employed. To this effects eight key-informant-interviews were conducted involving heads and team leaders from the departments of human resource management, finance and purchase, and plan and budget who were selected through purposive sampling; In addition, survey questionnaire was administered to 184 employees who engage in direct program implementation. Data on Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of sampled participants of the survey on gender mainstreaming were generated using sets of pertinent questions to be answered as Likert scale choices. The results revealed that, the participants in the study were aware of basic issues in gender mainstreaming, such as: gender inequality affects an organization’s performance; importance of gender mainstreaming for development; the need to have guidelines about gender mainstreaming and women’s participation in an organization etc. The respondent’s attitude on the needs of entitling women for positive discrimination during hiring is positive and high. Similarly, the participant’s outlook on the significance of the management’s role to ensure gender mainstreaming in the office is very good. The respondents in the study have mostly positive attitude on the women’s capability to do anything men can do. On the other hand, the participants moderately agreed with the natural equality of men and women, and have negative attitude on the positive discrimination entitlement of women at the workplace as a remedy for the inequalities in the past. With regards to practice of gender mainstreaming in the MoWSA, the participants claimed that the gender mainstreaming department is functional to some extent. In MoWSA the representation of women in higher decision-making positions were to some extent fair and also, MoWSA’s efforts towards gender mainstreaming is moderate. There are guidelines and circulars formulated by MoWSA that were implemented with the objectives of encouraging women inclusiveness, lessening gender disparity, empowering women to be professional and leaders in the implementation of gender mainstreaming and gender discourses. The organization’s reported status of practice on gender mainstreaming has positive correlation with awareness or knowledge of employees, whereas attitude score of employees did not show significant association with practice. Considering difference of score means of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice assessment scores between male and female employees, it was found that there is significant difference between men and women on their mean knowledge Attitude and Practice scores where mean knowledge score is lower for female employees and mean attitude and practice scores are higher for female employees compared to that of males. Therefore, MoWSA need to consider capacity building interventions to employees to improve gender mainstreaming implementation in the organization.
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Keywords
MOWSA, knowledge, Practice, Attitude, Gender mainstreaming