Psychological Empowerment of Rural Women Engaged in Informal Business, Gondar, Ethiopia

Abstract

It is a challenge to empower women in particular the rural women. Informal business in rural area can help to meet this challenge. Keeping in view the importance of the research work on women empowerment, the present study aims to discuss aspects of psychological empowerment through informal business in Gondar, Ethiopia. Simple Random sampling technique was applied for the survey which included 71 informal business women found in two rural villages Aba-Samuel and Amedege of Azezo. In the study, descriptive statistics, Likert Scale and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. According to the result of the study, more than 50 percent of the rural women were married who belonged to the age group of below 35 years and most of the decisions on business were taken by the respondents themselves. The study revealed that rural women entrepreneurs wanted to migrate to towns to earn more income - Aba-Samuel (42.42 percent) and Amedege (44 percent). One way ANOVA was carried to study the level of significance among the type of women entrepreneurs and the challenges faced by them. Two challenges namely Paucity of funds and Lack of training was statistically significant. Post Hoc analysis using Tukey HSD test was carried out. Likert Scale was used to study the level of psychological empowerment among the respondents. The calculated Likert score was found to be lesser than the mid value hence it is inferred that the rural women entrepreneurs of the two villages have less psychological empowerment though they are economically empowered.