Gender Inequality in Access to Formal Social Security Schemes among Members in the Informal Sector in Laikipia East District, Kenya

Abstract

Access to the social security schemes by the public is important in ensuring the social welfare of individuals both in the formal and the informal sector, thus the motivation to carry out a study on the challenges facing access to the schemes by the members of the informal sector. This is a sociological study on gender inequality in the access to formal security schemes among members of the informal sector in Laikipia East District. This study was motivated by the desire to document the possible challenges faced by members in this sector in accessing formal social security schemes while taking into consideration the gender differences. Social development theory was used to explain the relationship between the variables of the study. Literature review showed that despite the presence of various legislative provisions on social security in Kenya, the level of access to social security among members in the informal sector had not been widely documented. The study adopted a descriptive statistics research design. The unit of analysis were members of the informal sector. Stratified sampling technique was used to sample 200 respondents for the study while purposive sampling technique was used to sample the key respondents. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as instruments for data collection. Cross-tabulation was done to show the relationship between different variable investigated. This study found that there was low access to social security schemes among the members of the informal sector where female members were found to have less access to the schemes (5.5%) compared to their male counterparts (7.5%). Awareness was found to be a major hindrance to the access to social security schemes where female members of the informal sector were found to be less aware of the available schemes (71%) compared to the male (61%). Economic factors were also found to hinder access to the schemes and again female members in the informal sector were the hardest hit with 78% indicating that they were not able to remit the monthly contribution compared to 46% male who could not remit the contributions. Finally, government policy on the minimum contribution to the schemes was found to affect access to the schemes where most affected population in the informal sector were female (87%) compared to the male (83%).