Women's Economic Empowerment: Paving the Way for Household Income Enhancement

Abstract

Objective – Women with careers nowadays play an important role in their household income to support breadwinner husbands in easing the financial burden of families. To achieve the role, women are empowered to be independent and not too dependent on others by handing over the duty to generate a family income solely to their husbands. With low physical, financial, and human capital, and limited social and economic networks in Pulau Tuba, Langkawi, when the socio-economy activities of its majority Muslim population depend on agriculture, aquaculture, and tourism, the activities should be expanded to potential activities to increase family income since the island is well known with its natural resources. Women on the island also identify less participate in increasing the family income. Thus, this study aims to identify the potential activities for family income upgrading and determine factors for women's empowerment to support family income and the success of the activities. Methodology – To achieve the objective the study adopts quantitative research where the data were collected through a survey to randomly selected 150 respondents out of 4350 Pulau Tuba total population. The questionnaires are distributed to respondents through face to face by the representatives of the research team in November 2020. The collected data has been analyzed by descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis using Statistical Package for The Social Science (SPPS) tool version 21. Findings – The finding shows that women in Pulau Tuba are more inclined to increase their daily and family income in marketing, sales, livestock, and fisheries. Moving on, the environmental factor is the most effective because of its higher correlation value than the family factor and environmental factors that contribute significantly to improving family income in Pulau Tuba. Therefore, it is suggested to put effort to enhance awareness among women through appropriate workshops on marketing with large-scale participation. Type of Paper: Empirical JEL Classification: O11, O4