THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Empowering women has become an oftentimes cited goal of development intervention (Mosedale, 2005). In Nineteen Seventies once women empowerment was initial invoked by the collection feminist and women organizations, it had been explicably wont to frame and facilitate the struggle for social justice and women equality through a metamorphosis of economic, social and political structures at national and international levels (Bisath & Elson, 2003). The necessity to empower women looks to centre on the actual fact that girls have potentials to contribute to the event method however ar forced by some factors that render them engulfed. Whereas the explanations for any specific woman’s impotency (or powerfulness) ar several and varied, it should be necessary to think about what women have in common during this respect.

The common measure is that, they’re all forced by their generative responsibilities, social norms, beliefs, customs and values by that society differentiate between them and men (Kabeer, 2000). These constraints ar formed by male dominated social organization (patriarchy), high rate of impoverishment among women, and gender division of labour. Nonetheless, specializing in the authorisation of women as a gaggle needs an analysis of gender relations, that is, the means within which power relations between the sexes are made and maintained. In patricentric societies like African country, men have final authority over material resources within the house, like land and money crops, and over the labour of women and alternative house members. Women having no direct access to land and money crops or men’s labour, should request these resources from their husbands or from alternative males within the house to whom they’re supposed (Adams & Castle, 1994).

THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN