Practice, Challenges And Opportunities Of Women Participation In Leadership: The Case Of Ambo District Government Sectors, West Shoa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Leadership participation is noteworthy to every organization as it creates a vision of the future that considers the legitimate long-term interests of the parties involved in the organization and develops a strategy for moving toward that vision. The main objective of this study was to assess practice, challenges and opportunities of women leadership participation in the case of Ambo district government sectors where the issue needs immediate intervention. The research used descriptive design in nature and employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches. For attainment of objectives of the research, both primary and secondary data were obtained using different data collection instruments including survey questionnaires, KII and FGD. Moreover, random sampling was used to sample women employed in government sectors of the Ambo district while purposive sampling was used to identify participants of KII and FGD respondents. Out of total 398 about 112 survey questionnaire respondents were randomly selected and contacted to realize the research. The collected data was carefully processed and analyzed using SPSS v-20 to obtain relevant findings, arrive on conclusions and to forward helpful recommendations on the topic under consideration. The result of the study indicates that women leadership participation in these sectors was too low and there was great variation with male leaders’ proportion. Women were not couched, well initiated and directed to leadership participation by top officials. Women leadership participation in these sectors was affected by women personal factors, cultural, social, institutional and administrative factors to different magnitudes and dimensions. Moreover, women in these sectors were not empowered in leadership. Based on result of the study, the researcher recommends government top leaders in these sectors to increase women leadership participation trough leadership policy implementation, provide training and motivation while women were needed to improve themselves in terms of educational quality and personal characteristics. Government should create spaces and opportunities for women leadership participation. Nevertheless, both government and women should break women leadership barriers to engage in leadership