THE ROLE OF INCOME GENERATING ACTIVITIES ON THE SOCIOECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN IN KRACHI WEST DISTRICT

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a global blueprint for member countries including Ghana to translate the shared vision of sustainable development goals (SDGs) into national development plans and strategies. Over the past decades, Income Generating Activities (IGA) is increasingly used as a tool for poverty alleviation and livelihood empowerment. IGA therefore, plays a critical role towards the attainment of SDG in general and specifically the SDG4 agenda. The study therefore examined the role of IGA in the socioeconomic empowerment of women in the Krachi West District. Three objectives served as a guide in this study namely by examining how women participation in IGA contribute to their social and economic empowerment in the Krachi West District; identifying IGA opportunities available for women in the Krachi West District; and identifying the constraints women faced in engaging in income generating activities. The study adopted a mixed method using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative approach relied on the interpretative phenomenological design specifically, realistic phenomenological approach to capture the views and lived experiences of participants in the study, while statistical and inferential tools were adopted to collect and analyse quantitative data. The study population was 276 of women engaged in income generating activities. Data was collected through a standardised, formal questionnaire from 251 with multi-stage random sampling technique to select respondents and 25 participants were purposively selected from the total respondents for the focus group discussions (FGD). The study used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to analyse the qualitative data from the FGD. The IPA approach was used to make sense of the phenomenon under investigation, and explored the meanings participants’ idiographic experiences held for them. The interpretative phenomenological analytical approach made it possible for the thematic analysis of the data. Four major findings emerged from the study including: firstly, the research found that more than two-third of the total respondents did not participate in IGA opportunities offered by NGOs, state department and other financial institutions in the district. Despite the fact that they were aware of these opportunities and were interested in benefiting from it. This implied that there is low participation of women in IGA in the Krachi West District. Secondly, the research found that most of the IGAs of women in Krachi West District was not sustainable due to the fact that these women had low level education, had only informal skills training, have family commitment that did not enable them to fully participate in IGA training and capacity development and engaged in economic activity which is largely informal. Hence, they were likely to face challenges in accessing credit, formal training and skills development. Thirdly, the research found that women engaged in IGAs in the District are faced with constrains including poor transport infrastructure, lack of access to market, lack of coordinated IGA policy etc. Finally, the finding of this study that 96.0% of the respondents agreed that engaging in IGA’s will automatically increase women’s economic and social independence implied that the women believed that IGAs are a major tool for women empowerment in the Krachi West District. Based on these findings, the following recommendations were made including: The adoption community approach by Stakeholders including (the Government of Ghana, District Assemblies, CBOs and NGOs) to mobilize the women and design tailor-made IGA programmes taking into consideration the peculiar challenges of women in Krachi West District. The study findings emphasize the need for capacity training. Women should work together in groups and collaborate with community leaders including DCE, MP, Chiefs, and other opinion leaders to advocate for IGA policy and lobby for training programmes to equip the women with knowledge, skills and competence to facilitate sustainable IGAs.