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Agriculture is not only one of the most important sources of rural livelihoods in Tanzania, but also makes vital contributions to the country's economy. Rural women are major agricultural producers, especially at the household level. But unfortunately they have less access to agricultural extension services. The study examined gender equality in accessing agricultural extension services among farm women. The study was undertaken at Mlali ward in Mvomero District, where 2 villages were randomly selected. Probability and non-probability sampling techniques were used to select the study respondents, and data were collected from 62 respondents.
The study were guided by four specific objectives which were, to assess the attitude of the community towards women’s access to agricultural extension services, to determine socio-cultural and economic factors which promote/hinder women to access agricultural extension services, to analyze institutional framework for supporting women in accessing agricultural extension services in the rural areas and to assess the challenges of agricultural extension agents that affecting accessibility of extension services to farm women.
Qualitative methods of data collection through interviews and focus group discussion were used to collect the data, and documentary method was deployed to supplement the previous methods. Content and descriptive analysis was incorporated to analyze the data from the field with the help of SPSS version 20. The results showed that the attitude of the community towards women’s access to agricultural extension service was positive in the sense that community members were of the opinion that women have the right to access extension services as men do. Three quarters of the farm women who were involved in this study had never had contact with agricultural extension officers in their fields because they were not members in the farm community groups, so getting agricultural extension service, women must join infarm community groups/organization. Therefore, the resultsshowed that there is no any formal system such as policy or programs that are specifically dealing with the accessibility of agricultural extension services to farm women. In providing agricultural extension service extension agents faced with the challenges that in one way or another affecting farm woman to access agricultural extension services which were, means of transportation, many women are not members in the community farm groups and low level of participation of women in the farm field schools.
The study thus recommended that, Government should formulate agricultural extension services policy which will guide and look after farm women in various aspects in the sector of agriculture, also there is a need for local authority like WEO and VEO to establish communication with other stakeholders who are dealing with the agricultural credits and trainings. |
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