Abstract:
Women constitute nearly half of the Ethiopian population and they are involved in different
sectors of the economy. Although poor women are engaged in heavier and highly time
consuming workloads, they never obtain the commensurate earnings. This study was
conducted in Seka Chekorsa district of Jimma Zone and to analyze the determinants of
women’s participation in non-farm income generating activities. Both primary and secondary
data were used. Primary data were collected through survey interview schedule, FGD and
key informant interview. Two-stage sampling method was used to select 149 sample
respondents (60=participants, 89=non-participants). The data were analyzed using both
descriptive statistics and econometric model. The major sources of income for sample
respondents were petty trade, collecting and selling fire wood, selling charcoal, handicraft,
grain trading, tailoring and hair dressing saloon. About 83.3% of women in the study area
engaged in low income generating activities. Heckman regression analysis shows that
education, amount of credit and membership to formal organization increases the probability
of women’s participation in NFIGAs while age, average time spent in domestic work and
distance from market have significant negative effect. Similarly, the OLS regression results
assured that education, total land holding, amount of credit and average time spent in
domestic work were significantly related to the level of women participation in non-farm
income generating activities. Therefore, the findings of the study suggest that efforts should
focus on encouraging and empowering adult women, find ways of uneducated member better
benefit from the service, provide better access to credit, introducing new technology that
reduce women work load, developing the transport infrastructure and encourage women to be
member of formal organization
