Gender Parity and Poverty in Rural Households of Nigeria: Empowerment as A Way Forward

Abstract

Building capacity of rural women and men to deal with the poverty problems has become important issue in most developing countries. This is because the issue of rural poverty is inevitable gender issue. It has been observed that most of the rural poor are women who suffer from unequal empowerment opportunity. The issue is affecting mostly women and children as growing generation. This may be due to their unsustainable source of income. The situation is what World Bank defined as “poverty the inability for women to attain a minimum standard of living”. Indeed where there is poverty, there are women and children. Where women are poor, uneducated and underpowered in society, these characteristics seem to appear among the family members. This study uses descriptive and correlation research designs to compare the income level, the educational level and occupational status of both males and females among household members in the study area. The finding reveals that, there are wider gaps between males and females in all the three domains of investigation.These also indicate that, the women are lagging behind; and these issues need to be readdressed, because in the rural areas, women are the largest and the vulnerable group.Interestingly, empowerment correlation is significant (p<0.05), moderate for females and very small for males respondents.