Abstract:
This paper explores the linkage between women socio-economic status and their
empowerment. A total of 402 women completed a household questionnaire, which
was supplemented with focus group discussions and key informant interviews.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA), using SPSS version 16, was applied to the
socio-economic data to obtain an index as a proxy for household socio-economic
status. A composite women empowerment index was constructed to gauge women
empowerment in different spheres, and F-test was used to compare the relationship
between women’s socio-economic status and their empowerment. It was found that
many respondents were categorized into low to medium levels of empowerment.
Relatively, high levels of empowerment were found in aspects of household economic
consultation, freedom of movement and political autonomy. Asset ownership and
housing conditions revealed that the poorest were below average in most of the items
or services in which the better-off had access or possessed. The relationship between
socio-economic status and women empowerment was statistically significant (P<0.05),
implying that efforts to improve women's wellbeing that focus on income and asset
accumulation have the potential to empower women. Therefore the government, nongovernmental
organisations and development programmes espousing to empower
women should improve their approach to ensure the poorest also gain opportunities to
participate in onion value-chains and in other development interventions.
