MSc. Dissertation of Art in Rural Development 2018
Women’s economic empowerment is crucial for growth of the economy within the
country and globally. However, it is not well known whether women’s involvements in
TASAF activities are impacting positively on their economic empowerment. The overall
objective of this study was to assess women’s economic empowerment among women
involved in TASAF project in Morogoro District. The specific objectives were to identify
the activities initiated by TASAF; to examine women participation in selected TASAF
project activities; to determine the level of empowerment among women participating in
TASAF project activities; to determine economic empowerment as a result of participation
in TASAF project activities. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design, whereby
a total of 160 respondents were involved. The study used primary and secondary data;
primary data the tools used were questionnaire survey, FGD guide and interview schedule
for key informant and secondary data was collected from publication from TASAF project
office and Village office. A descriptive statistics was used to identify the activities
performed by women who were supported by TASAF project and social demographic
characteristics. A Cumulative Empowerment Index (CEI) was used to determine the
overall level of women’s economic empowerment. A binary logistic regression model was
used to analyse the impact of women’s participation in TASAF project and their economic
empowerment. The results showed that women were involved in livestock keeping, food
vending, selling vegetables, fruits, fish, homemade soaps and local beer. The study further
revealed that majority (71.6%) of the respondents was economically empowered. In
addition women’s participation in TASAF activities, women organizations and age of
woman were important predictors to women’s economic empowerment (P<0.05). Thus, it
is concluded that, participation in TASAF initiated activities had a great potential to
empower women economically.
Therefore, it is recommended that stakeholders and
NGOs should encourage women to participate in TASAF activities through provision of
trainings and awareness rising; in addition financial institutions should provide soft loans
to women in order to enable them to establish income generating activities to empower
them economically.