Empowering women through collective action: The performance of all-female red-pepper processing workgroups in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia
Publication year
2017Author(s)
Publisher
S.l. : s.n.
ISBN
9789402808957
Number of pages
175 p.
Annotation
Radboud University, 20 december 2017
Promotores : Ruben, R., Smits, J.P.J.M.
Publication type
Dissertation
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Organization
SW OZ RSCR CAOS
Languages used
English (eng)
Subject
Anthropology and Development StudiesAbstract
Empowering women should be seen not only as the process of achieving social justice and human right among all members of a society but also as a necessary condition for the eradication of poverty in low-income countries. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world with the highest level of gender inequalities and women disempowerment. Ethiopia is ranked 129 out of 156 countries on the list of the gender inequality index of the Human Development Report of 2015. In the last two decades, the Ethiopian government and developmental organizations have facilitated the formation of women workgroups as a model strategy to develop women’s empowerment and to enhance the women’s capacity to act collectively. Most of these workgroups are involved in the red-pepper and other spices processing business and have received massive support in terms of working places, business training, finances management, market integration, micro-finances and so forth. This thesis focuses on these female workgroups, analyses factors that influence their performance and determines to what extent that their objective of empowering women is achieved. To do this, we have developed four studies, which are discussed in the four central chapters of this thesis. The first three studies are focused on important factors that may influence the performance of these workgroups, namely risk-taking attitudes of the women, intra-group trust and monitoring, and ethnic diversity of the groups. The economic performance of these workgroups is directly related to the economic empowerment of their members, because income generated by women is considered as one of the main components of economic empowerment. It remains, however, to be seen whether economic empowerment also contributes to other dimensions of empowerment (familial, psychological, legal, political and socio-cultural). This will be addressed in the fourth study of this thesis.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238441]
- Dissertations [13444]
- Electronic publications [122536]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [29483]
- Open Access publications [97529]
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