l Desta, Daniel ( PhD)Feye, Aderie2018-08-032023-11-052018-08-032023-11-052002-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/10937The study was designed to assess the employment opportunities and working situations of women with visual impairment. In conducting the study, a total of 167 subjects were taken. The subjects comprise four groups. The main target group is 58 employed and 50 unemployed women with visual impairment. The other three groups were 55 staff-members/ 24 men and 31 female/, 3 managers and 1 representative of policy makers. The study sites were 8 organizations/institutions in Addis Ababa. Concerning sampling techniques, the sites were purposefully taken and employed and unemployed women were drawn based on the availability sampling technique. The staff-members and key persons-managers, a policy maker were taken purposefully. Questionnaires, attitude scales interview and FGD were employed in order to generate data. Depending upon the nature of the data collected, both quantitative (i.e. percentage, chi-square) and qualitative methods were employed in the analysis of the collected data. The findings have shown that women with visual impairment are discriminated by hiring institutions. As a result, they have less access to employment opportunities, mainly due to the disability factor and gender. Hence, they are in double jeopardy. The results also revealed that whether women with visual impairment are the employed or unemployed is determined primarily by the awareness of the society. In addition to this, the major cause of employment problem for them was found to be less opportunity for education and training. Moreover, employers’ conditions, cultural influence, lack of adequate material or moral support during school life, and self-perception about oneself are the other causes for low employment opportunity of women with visual impairment. ivIn addition to the discrimination, women with visual impairment face in getting job, they are also discriminated in payment, promotion, transfer, and training. These problems however, were found to be less serious compared to getting job. Concerning the attitude of staff-members, except some, most of them have positive attitude towards women with visual impairment. Though there was no clear pattern as to the difference of attitudes between the men and women, women are more positive towards visually impaired women than men staff-members. Some recommendations were made based on the findings particularly in relation to the active role the government and NGOs have to play. The study gives a direction on priority areas of interventions such as incentives, job-reservation, introducing appropriate new technologies, developing assertiveness in order to improve situations of women with visual impairmentenAddis ababa Situations at workTechnical Report