The Role of Women’s Creativity and Innovations in the Nigerian Informal Sector of Oke Ogun Zone

Oluwatoyin Dorcas Alese,M A Hassan

doi:10.5539/ies.v4n3p213

Abstract

This study was guided by the desire to advance whether concerted effort could enhance the creativity and innovations of women towards empowerment. Other purposes include: establishing the level of empowerment towards attaining good growth in building the informal sector economy and enhancing the status of women in Oke Ogun zone of Nigeria; determining the problems facing the creative abilities of women in improving their knowledge and skills through training. This study adopted descriptive survey design of ex-post facto type. Proportionate and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 128 women entrepreneurs as participants from four (4) purposively selected skills. Women Creativity and Innovations for Empowerment Questionnaire with reliability co-efficient of 0.86 was used as the main instrument to elicit responses from participants while 4 Focus Group Discussion sessions (FGDs) complemented the Questionnaire. The study indicated that there is a significant combined effect of women’s socio-empowerment and women’s economic empowerment on women’s creativity and innovations (F (2,111) = 3.349; R=239, R2= .057, Adj. R2=0.040; P=0.05). However, the Nigerian government is yet to advance a committed political will towards enhancing the efforts of women through the creation of good supportive measures, and an enabling environment to reduce poverty, create job opportunities and develop her human resources. It is recommended that the Nigerian government should demonstrate a good political will in poverty alleviation programmes, women’s social groups and business organizations should be geared towards pulling labour and resources together to maximize labour productivity, information and social network which will lead to good growth of the informal sector.

Highlights

The importance of economic integration of the people in a nation cannot be overemphasized especially, women who have been under appreciated for a long time in developing economies
Other purposes include: establishing the level of empowerment towards attaining good growth in building the informal sector economy and enhancing the status of women in Oke Ogun zone of Nigeria; determining the problems facing the creative abilities of women in improving their knowledge and skills through training
It is recommended that the Nigerian government should demonstrate a good political will in poverty alleviation programmes, women’s social groups and business organizations should be geared towards pulling labour and resources together to maximize labour productivity, information and social network which will lead to good growth of the informal sector

Summary

Introduction

The importance of economic integration of the people in a nation cannot be overemphasized especially, women who have been under appreciated for a long time in developing economies. Women play essential and dynamic roles in economic life, they adapt to change and are very creative. As agents of development in all societies women play tremendous roles through creativity and innovations both in the formal and informal sector highly prevalent in the informal sector. Creativity is a mental and individual phenomenon involving the ability of individuals or groups of individuals in cooperation while innovations is an activity that transforms visionary ideas of creativity into products and services that deliver greater value (Rigie and Harmeyer, 2009). Without creativity there cannot be new products, new models or design where women are very active

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Discussion

Conclusion