Abstract:
Women and development issues have been on the world agenda since the United Nations organized the first women’s conference in Mexico in 1975 (UN Secretary-General 2012). Existing literature indicates that, women are generally unable to participate fully in the development process. Thus, more women are poor; illiterate; do not enjoy proper health care; are victims of violence such as rape, abuse as well as neglect, denied basic rights, suffer other forms of inequality and their status is below that of men and their situation is far worse than the men’s. Despite these factors, there is dearth of information regarding factors affecting women participation in community development projects. The objective of the study is to investigate factors that influence participation of women in community development projects. The study was conducting on community development projects in Jimma city. The researcher used both primary and secondary sources of data for the research. It was conducted on a total of 339 sampled women of age above 20. Systematic sampling method was used and survey was conducted on program and non-program participants. So as to triangulate the data collected from program participants and non-participants, in-depth interviews and FGDs was deployed. Quantitative data was analyzed with SPSS version 20 using frequency, tabular, percentage and logistic regression. The qualitative data was triangulated with quantitative data after thematic analysis. Besides, women participation in community development project was influenced by access to information mechanism and selection criteria were 43.1% (95% CI: 1.058-2.345) and 56.4% (95% CI: 0.305-0.806) respectively. The other, age of the respondents AOR 4.732 (1.334, 16.78), participation in project AOR 0.648 (0.115, 3.652), marital status of the respondents (divorced and widowed) 0.825 (0.354, 3.528) and community attitude toward women participation AOR 1.44 (0.869, 2.385) were statistically significant for association of women participation in community development projects. Women participation in community development projects were influenced by access of information, selection criteria and community attitude toward women, marital status, and lack of support from community and government structures were among the common. Furthermore for enhancing women participation in community development projects stakeholders and program integration and collaboration are played significant roles. Besides Information sharing mechanism and accessing to target groups should be improved to enroll appropriate target in the community.
