In Buno Bedele Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia
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THE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENCES Journal homepage: http://www.journals.wsrpublishing.com/index.php/tjanrs Online ISSN: 2383-238X Print ISSN: 2423-4397 Original Article Smallholder Women Participation in to Farmers Training Centers (FTC) in Buno Bedele Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia Esayas Negasa Hambisa Department of Agribusiness and Value Chain Management, Mettu University, Mettu, Ethiopia ABSTRACT The main objective of this study is to assess the smallholder women participation in FTC at Buno Bedele zone, southwestern Ethiopia. The researcher has forwarded three research questions and formulated three research objectives. What status of participation of women in FTC? What were the major challenges women faced to participating in FTC?, what is factors that affecting the women farmers’ to participating in FTC?. Multi stage random sampling techniques were employed to select a total of 72 respondents from nine Kebeles. Data were collected from both secondary and primary sources. Finally, the data were analyzed by descriptive and econometrics methods. According to the finding of the research hiring and transfer practice, social barriers such as house hold activities and family care contributed in limiting the participation of women in FTC. The logit estimation technique was estimating the factors that affecting women participation in to FTC. Specifically, women participation in to FTC is significantly influenced by the levels of education, membership to cooperative, extension contact frequencies, and family size. Therefore, policy aimed to accelerate agricultural development in the area could be successful if these factors and problems are taken into consideration to participating women farmers in to FTC. The absence of proper implementation of government policies such as affirmative action and gender quota should be resolved. Keywords: women participation, FTC, challenge, social barriers and logit model INTRODUCTION Background of the study In Ethiopia women work longer hours than men in nearly every part of a country and do more of the total work than men. Even if they have such contribution to the development of the society at large, they have not been enjoying the fruits of development equally with their Corresponding Author: Esayas Negasa Hambisa < [email protected] > How to Cite this Article: Hambisa, E.N. (2020). Smallholder Women Participation in to Farmers Training Centers (FTC) in Buno Bedele Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia. The Journal of Agriculture and Natural Resources Sciences, 7(1),1-9. Retrieved from http://www.journals.wsrpublishing.com/index.php/tjanrs/article/view/483 Article History: Received: 2020-03-03 Accepted: 20209-04-20 Copyright © 2020 World Science and Research Publishing. All rights reserved This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1 Esayas Negasa Hambisa THE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENCES, 7(1): 1-9 male counterparts, due to the gender based problem that faced them for the centuries. Ethiopia is a patriarchal society’s that keep women at subordinate position using religion and culture as an excuse. They also suffer from work stereotype and gender distribution of labor, more are occupying in economically invisible work (Shimelis, 2015). According to (Adamu and Mekonnen, 2009), Ethiopia is one of the countries where in women’s participation is minimal due to the ideological, political, and economic and socio- cultural factors and lack of social and political capacities. However, to enhance the political participation of women the government of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia(FDRE) ratified the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, integrated the same in the country’s constitution and made it the law of the land. Although women constitute two third of the world’s working hours, produces half of the world’s food and more than half of the world population they live in low social status in the society and in lower labor market. For the centuries they have been denied equal access of education, training, and employment opportunities. They were also neglected in the policy formulation and decision making processes and their education is limited to learning domestic skill (WB, 2003). From the historical perspective of gender issues, it can be understood that women have been victims of inequality since long throughout the world. For instance, in Ethiopia there is a traditional belief that says the role of women is expected to play in their home helping their families with household activities such as cooking, take caring kids, washing and so on. For this as research findings indicate the major cause is gender bias and behavior arises from social, economic, cultural, historical and religious factors. As a result of these factors, inequality is highly prevalent for women in the areas of social, political and economic life (Shimelis, 2015). In Buno Bedele zone the number of women and men are almost related. Even the number of men are larger compared with that of women farmers. In contrast to these women in the zone are occupying lower proportions of participation in FTC when compared with that of the males. Thus this study is set out to investigate the challenges of women participation in FTC of the zone and to analyze the policies and programs set regarding gender equality including their implementation. Moreover, the study focuses at identifying challenges that hinder women participation in FTC so as to suggest possible strategies that can be used to enhance their participation. Development, to be perfect and sustainable, needs wider participation from all segments of the society including women who are currently uninvolved in FTC. In the line with of the problem discussed above, the study designed to answer the following questions. 1. What is the status of participation of women in decision making of Buno Bedele zone? 2. What were the major challenges for gender gap to participating in FTC of Buno Bedele zone? 3. What are the factors that affecting the women farmers’ to participating in FTC? RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Description of the Buno Bedele Zone Study Area Chewaka, Didessa and Gechi districts are located in Buno Bedele zone. Chewaka is located 600 kilometers west of Addis Ababa. It has 28 administrative kebeles (villages). The total land area of the district is about 52,227 hectares, and the population is estimated to be 78,783(CSA, 2008). Gechi is one of the district in the Buno Bedele Zone, is bordered on the south by Didessa, on the east by the Jimma Zone, on the north by Bedele, and on the east by the Didessa River 2 which separates it from the Jimma Zone. Gechi is the major tow in Gechi. The 2007 national Page Esayas Negasa Hambisa THE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENCES, 7(1): 1-9 census reported a total population for this district of 70,478, of whom 35,307 were men and 35,171 were women; 5,442 or 7.72% of its population were urban dwellers. Didessa is one of the districts in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. It is named after the Didessa River, a tributary of the Abay River. Part of the Buno Bedele Zone, Didessa is bordered on the south by the Didessa River which separates it from the Jimma Zone, and on the north by Gechi. The major town in Didessa is Dembi. Soybean is an important cash crop of this district. Types and Sources of Data Both primary and secondary sources were used. Primary data sources were smallholder farmers from six purposely selected Kebeles. Secondary data was collected from different sources, such as: District Agricultural Office, reports, bulletins and websites. Sampling Procedure and Sample Size Multistage sampling technique was employed to select respondents for the study. In the first stage, three districts were randomly selected. Nine Kebeles were selected randomly from three districts in the second stage. In the third stage, simple random sampling technique was used to select the households. Probability proportional to size (PPS) was used to determine the number of farmers. The sample size determination was resolved by means of Yamane (1967) sampling formula with 95 percent confidence level. N n = … … … … … … … … … (1) 1 + N(e) n= sample size for the research use 2 N= total number of respondents e= margin of errors at 5% As a result, 77 respondents were selected for the purpose of the study. Methods of Data Analysis Descriptive and econometrics analyses were used for analyzing the data collected from respondents in the study area. Model specification The logit model based on probability function is used in this study since it is believed to offer better explanation on underlying the factors affecting women participation in to FTC. The dependent variable in this case is dummy variable which takes the value of one for participate or zero otherwise. According to Hosmer and Lemeshew (1989), the logistic distribution function for analyzing the factors influencing women participation in to FTC at the study area can mathematically be specified as follows: 1 p = … … … … … … … … . … (2) 1 + e the Where pi is the probability iof being −willingzi to participating in to FTC for the i women farmers and zi is a function of n explanatory variables (xi) and expressed as: = + + + + … (3) Where βo is the intercept and βi are the slope parameters in the model. The slope tells how 0 1 1 2 2 the log-odds in favor of being willing to participation ⋯ change as independent variables change. Since the conditional distribution of the outcome variable follows a binomial distribution 3 with a probability given by the conditional mean Pi, interpretation of the coefficient was Page Esayas Negasa Hambisa THE JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENCES, 7(1): 1-9 understandable if the binary logistic model can be rewritten in terms of the odds and log of the odds, (Gujarati, 1995). The odds was defined as the ratio of the probability that a women farmer were participating (Pi) to the probability of non-participation (1-Pi).