THE CONTRIBUTION OF WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT TO THEIR SOCIO ECONOMIC WELLBEING A CASE OF SELECTED COOPERATIVES IN BUGESERA DISTRICT (2017-2023)

Abstract

The main purpose for this study was to assess the contribution of women’s empowerment to their socio economic wellbeing by considering Bugesera District as case study. In particular, it sought to assess women’s socio-economic empowerment programmes in Bugesera District, to examine the extent to which women’s empowerment contributes to their socio-economic wellbeing in Bugesera District, to compare the relationship between women empowerment and their socio-economic wellbeing in Bugesera District, to understand the challenges of women’s economic empowerment in Bugesera District and to highlight the strategies to overcome the challenges of women’s economic empowerment in Bugesera District. The study used descriptive research design and the population of this research was 2584 cooperative members while the sample size was 346 respondents selected using stratified and simple random sampling techniques. Data were obtained using different approaches including questionnaire surveys and interviews. The findings revealed that in agriculture, various programs such as Crop Intensification Program (CIP) (Monocrop farming, land use consolidation and wetland/ marshland management among others have been set up to promote women in Bugesera District. The results also shown the strong relationship between women’s empowerment and their socio-economic wellbeing in Bugesera District, whereby 61.8% of respondents very highly confirmed that women’s economic empowerment increased the ability of women to bring about change that drives valuable outcomes. The individual regression model coefficients on extent to which dependent variable as socio-economic development women Bugesera district is influenced by women’s empowerment namely women’s economic empowerment programmes, women’s social empowerment programmes, and direct support programs to vulnerable people and micro financing activities. The study revealed that the P-value was less than 0.05 in all the variables, which shows that all the independent variable were statistically significant and thus in position to make conclusion for the study. From the findings on the coefficient of determination, the study found that at 95% confidence interval, great variation in the socio-economic development of women in Bugesera District is accounted to changes in women’s economic empowerment programmes, women’s social empowerment programmes, and direct support programs to vulnerable people and micro financing activities. However, the results show that some challenges to women’s economic empowerment in Bugesera District include insufficient involvement of men in reproductive health and family planning, lack of collateral security to access funding, and limited skills for women to take technical jobs that are well paying. The strategies to overcome the challenges of women’s economic empowerment in Bugesera District were to facilitate and support capacity building programs for increased participation of women and Increasing measures to address GBV by tackling the different influencing factors. This research recommends to the future researcher to investigate poverty alleviation and empowerment of rural women through self-help groups in Rwanda.