The Role of Women Agricultural Cooperatives in Building Sustainable Livelihood for Rural Women: The Case of A-Wagebeta and B-Wagebeta Cooperatives, Duna Woreda, Hadiya Zone, Snnpr

Abstract

The study on the role of Women agricultural cooperatives in building sustainable livelihood for rural women in the case of A-Wagebeta and B-Wagebeta primary agricultural cooperative attempted to analyse the contribution of primary agricultural cooperatives for women. The main objective of the study is to access the role in enabling the members to build sustainable livelihood. By using the sustainable livelihood framework adopted from DFID(1999), The study tried to illustrate how the cooperatives as transforming structure enabled women to build sustainable livelihood by accessing livelihood capitals .The study employed cross-sectional survey as research design . It also employed both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. The quantitative method of data collection employed survey method and the qualitative method of data collection employed key informant interview and FGD. Using this methods,primary data was collected from sample members of the cooperatives, centrally placed officials from cooperative development offices and managerial bodies of the cooperative enterp rises.Simple random sampling technique was employed so as to select sample respondents of the study.The finding of the study has revealed that the cooperatives provided women with various services including supply of agricultural inputs,credit services,marketing of agricultural input and output. Access to these services inturn enabled women to improve their productivity. Despite these benefits it yielded to women,the cooperative encountered various problems that hamperd the potential benefit of women are inefficient managerial system, lack of transparency and accountability,inadequate capital and unequal participation of men and women etc, which calls for the due attention of concerned bodies