The Role of Cooperatives in Promoting Socio Economic Empowerment of Women in The Case of Jimma Zone Seka Chekorsa Woreda

Abstract

Rural women belong to the most deprived section of the society facing adverse conditions in terms of social oppression and economic inequality, a visible majority of them being poor. So Women empowerment, as a policy approach, uses different mechanisms to empower women; out of which organizing women into cooperatives is attracting the attention of many organizations. Thus a study was conducted to assessing the role of cooperatives in promoting socioeconomic empowerment of women in rural areas of Jimma Zone, SekkaWoreda credit and saving cooperative. The study design of this study wasl an integration of descriptive and explanatory research design. On the other way based on data collected from 6 cooperative 224 purposively selected respondents in the study areas. In addition, key informant interviews and secondary data were also used to collect the necessary information. And finally, the collected data was analyzed using statistical package for social science version.21 (SPSS) software descriptive statistics (mean standard deviation, inferential and binary logistics regression was used to check the magnitude of effects. The binary logistic regression analysis the role of co-operatives on socio-economic dimension empowerment depict that the demographic factors, institutional factors and economic factors have a significant positive effect on Women’s socio-economic empowerment with (p-value=0.05). The result identified that the contribution of cooperatives on woman’s income improvement, enhanced capacity building, promote participatory and democracy, create safe working condition and bargaining power and align access to decision makings.To sum-up in majority of the metrics used the respondents have shown improvement in their socioeconomic status, however, there are still limitations that hinder women from active participation in their cooperatives. Thus, considerable awareness creation and women empowerment advocacy activities and policies should be derived by appropriatestakeholders.