Women empowerment and poverty alleviation A case study of Kicukiro District, Kigali, Rwanda

Abstract

The topic of this study was women empowerment and poverty alleviation and the case study was Kicukiro district, Kigali, Rwanda. The problem was that, despite the effort made for empowering women in different areas in Rwanda, a big number of women still live in poverty, sadly some in extreme poverty and also, to what extent to which women empowerment contribute to poverty alleviation in Rwanda still ignored. The purpose of this study was to analyze the women empowerment towards poverty alleviation in Rwanda, and the specific objectives of the study were threefold. First, to analyze the key women empowerment activities and their effectiveness Second, to determine the role played by empowered women in alleviating poverty in Kicukiro district, and thirdly to establish the relationship between the women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Rwanda. The study was conducted in Kicukiro district of Kigali city using documentary review and questionnaire. Both purposive and stratified random samplings were used to select respondents. For this study, right holders and right bearers have been considered as population, and the total number of population was 121 which was composed of 115 empowered women (85 married women and 30 single women) and 6 right bearers (3 sector women advisors and 1 district women advisor, 1project coordinator and 1chairperson of women umbrella in Kigali city). The categorization of the population has been shown in the table 2. To determine the ideal sampling size for a population, a formula for determining sample size published by the research division of the National Education Association was used and the table 3 gives the details, therefore the sample of 60 respondents has been used. It was established that women empowerment is broadly understood by respondents, and they have revealed the key women empowerment activities as follow: Training on hand craft; tailoring and fashionable design, training on saving, training on business planning, entrepreneurship, writing and reading skills, loan access, trading and business, decision making. The respondents’ perception of 90percent has justified the significant impact of women empowerment on poverty alleviation in Kicukiro district. In addition, to measure how close the data are to the fitted regression line and relationship between two variables, the statistical measure which is the coefficient of determination “R-squared” has been determined and has been noticed that was equal to 0.879 which was implicating that dependent variable (Poverty alleviation) depends at 87.9percent the independent variables (Women empowerment) and which is very significant as it was lied between 0 and 1, which was close to1. This has showed that there was a strong relationship between women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Kicukiro district. Finally, recommendations have been brought out and arising the topic under the study and are threefold. Those regard to the women cooperatives of Kicukiro district, local leaders and government authorities and further researchers.