Factors that influence economic empowerment of rural women in Lira district.

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate factors that influence economic empowerment of rural women in lira district with the specific objectives determining the influence of age, household income, and income from formal employment, property ownership, marital status, micro savings and micro credit on rural women's economic empowerment. The study used secondary data from Uganda National Household Survey 2016/2017 were we used 103 women from Lira district. We employed the use of SPSS and STATA in the analysis of the variables. The results of the study revealed that the mean of the age was 40. The minimum age was 20 and the maximum age was 89. More women owned assets (75.73%) and earned high household income (51.46%) The highest number of the respondents (29.1%) are widows, (20.4%) are married, (19.4%) are divorced, (16.5%) are cohabiting, (14.6%) are single and a high number of women earned income from formal employment (53.40%). The majority of the women saved (82.52%). Majority of the respondents (69.9%) agreed to receive income from SACCOs. There is a positive (7.79) significant relationship between widowed women and rural women economic empowerment since is p < 0.05. When women are widowed, they are more likely to make independent financial decisions than married women. There is a negative (0.93) significant relationship between age and rural women economic empowerment in the household since is p < 0.05. Therefore, as women grow older, they are less likely to be engaged in decision making. There is a negative (0.10) significant relationship between women who jointly own assets with non-family members and rural women economic empowerment in the household since is p < 0.05. Therefore, women who jointly own assets with non-family members are less likely to make independent decisions compared to those who own assets individually. Based on the finding’s government should provide training programs to rural women to improve women's entrepreneurial skills and reduce the problems grants them access to various source of income.