Women Empowerment And Its Impacts On Agricultural Productivity: Empirical Evidence From Toke Kutaye District, West Shoa Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

Half of the World’s population is composed of women. Empowerment of women, thus means an incredibly large number of people. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of women empowerment on agricultural productivity in Toke Kutaye district. For this study both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data was collected from the total of 185 respondent using both quantitative and qualitative method. To achieve the objective of this study the Cumulative Empowerment Index (CEI) were developed by adding the obtained weighted score of the five empowerment indicators, based on which the respondent were classified in empowered and non-empowered women farmer. The distribution of demonstrates that 42.16% of women were empowered at different level of empowerment, whereas 57.84% of women were categorized under non- empowered. To address the mentioned objective the descriptive statistics and econometric model (Propensity score matching (PSM) and Logit Model) were employed. The econometrics result of logit model indicated that the likelihood of both empowered and non-empowered women farmer were positively and negatively affected by land and Fertilizer respectively. The propensity score matching (PSM) estimation result revealed that women empowerment had significant impact on agricultural productivity. This indicated that empowered women famer increase productivity more by using fertilizer and improved seed. The result also showed that empowered women farmer (EWF) more control over productive resource, such as land, Improved Seed, fertilizer and other productive resource than non-empowered women farmer (NEWF). The finding result revealed that the agricultural productivity difference between empowered and non-empowered women farmer was about 48.86%. The study can be recommended that the government and non-government organization give attention for providing the necessarily awareness to the community regarding to women empowerment to more encouraging women empowerment in the rural area of the country in order to more increase agricultural productivity and to achieve sustainable development throughout the country. Therefore without supporting women to bring sustainable economic development is unexpected