Women participation in rural development projects in Moiben sub-county of Uasin gishu County, Kenya

Abstract

The concept of participation has been widely used whenever projects are initiated in any given locality. In most cases policy makers especially in donor funded projects have had a feeling that it’s through participation that sustainability and community ownership of projects is realized. Today however, the challenge being faced is how to ascertain the actual contribution realized whenever people participate in a project. Women participation in development cannot be over emphasized as women have made great strides in the development discourse in the country. However whenever women participation is discussed it tends to focus only on increasing the number, rather than their capacity for making “quality” contributions, in essence women’s descriptive and substantive representation the “quantity” and “quality” of their participation should be examined. Based on this scenario, this study examined the role of women participation in rural development projects in Moiben Sub County in Uasin Gishu County. The study objectives were to; assess the level of women participation in rural development projects, examine the determinants of women participation in rural development projects, determine the impact of women participation in rural development projects and establish possible strategies in improving women participation in rural development projects. This study was guided by people centered development theory. The study used mixed method approach and as such a descriptive survey research design was used. The target population was 3000 self-help groups in the sub-county. Simple random sampling was used to get a sample size of the 150 respondents and purposive sampling was used to get a sample size of 12 participants for in-depth interviews. To collect the data, the study used semi structured questionnaires and interview schedule. The collected data was subjected through the SPSS computer package which was coded, organized, analyzed and presented using descriptive statistics additionally qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis where categories of responses for each objective from the respondents were identified, classified and combined into themes. This study has four major findings. First the level of women participation in rural development projects in Moiben Sub County is relatively at medium scale. Secondly, determinants of women participation in rural development projects that is resources, education ,skills , culture and traditions majorly contributes to participation of women in rural development projects. Thirdly, there is a significant impact of women participation in rural development projects but it was relatively low. Fourthly, the strategies of enhancing women participation in rural development projects is increase their financial status of women, impart skills and trainings' to increase awareness of women on rural development projects and shun away negative retrogressive beliefs and culture. The study recommends that attempts should be made to improve women participation in rural development projects by mainstreaming gender in projects and policies, create awareness, improve training capacities and also encourage community based approaches.