A Study on Economic Status of Rural Women in Tigray (With Particular Focus on Tabia Aynalem and Genfel)

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.