| Abstract: | High proportion of people in economically deprived countries like Ethiopia often identified
with uncivilized social and cultural beliefs and practices. One in kind is the prevalence of
women inequality practices, which caused for the male-favored gender disparity statistics in
most of the development indicator parameters. As the country’s economy grows, the
proportion of empowered women also increases. However, this may be a very long term task
for countries to achieve. Thus the global short cut solution designed by the international
development support program interventions like the one being done by WISE Ethiopia, which
is the focus of this study. The basic questions of this study are how significance the program
components are to the socioeconomic conditions of the poor urban women? And what
possible positive contributions it yields in empowering the target communities? In an attempt
to address these questions, the study’s objectives identify how the program components are
relevant and to what extent it helps in empowering the target women. To attain this, the
descriptive quantitative research type designed with descriptive and correlation statistics
employed in analyzing the survey data. Thus, the summary of the findings shows that the
desired economic empowerment attained in most of the members, the decision making
empowerment also attained in financial disbursement and family planning matters
significantly, while partially achieved on the freedom of movement. Women also found to
have sufficient exposure to media and high level of legal right awareness. Thus, the
intervention needs to be strengthened both in depth and width. |
