Woman Empowerment and Household Income in Kira Municipality, Uganda

Abstract

The empowerment of women is crucial for the development of a nation .This study is about women empowerment and household income in Kira Municipality of Uganda. The objectives were to establish the strategies of women empowerment, the effect of women empowerment on household income and the challenges to women empowerment. We adopted a cross-sectional survey design, considering a sample size of 72 respondents who were randomly sampled. Findings revealed that strategies for women empowerment included women being encouraged to join group saving groups. It was revealed that women were not adequately trained as dispute settlers, linkers, motivators, facilitators, and negotiators to help implement women empowerment projects in as far as empowering them was concerned. Regarding the impact of women empowerment, findings revealed that skills have been enhanced through training received from women empowerment implementers and programs have reduced employment among these women through skills attained. However, key challenges to women empowerment emerged including but not limited to There is inadequate finance and inappropriate funding of activities, limited access to credit sources to expand our activities, poorly trained community projects facilitators and unnecessary hinder project activities and political interests which affect women group leadership such as interference from community political forces. It is recommended that more efforts should be put to economic empowerment as a process of increasing women’s access to economic resources and opportunities including jobs, financial services, property and other productive assets, skills development and market information. Lastly women should be encouraged to participate in enterprise activities to gain a greater economic role in decision-making. Exercising control over these financial matters enables women to optimize their own and the household’s welfare.