Tesfaye Edosa Damesa and Gemechu Shale Ogato. 2016. Towards Empowering Rural Women through Microfinance Assisted Income Generating Activities: The Case of Wesasa Microfinance Institution, Dandi District, Ethiopia. American Journal of Business and Management Vol. 5, No. 2.
The authors commence with a brief explanation of micro-finance and women’s empowerment. While microfinance tends to address the household to encourage their economy and productivity, women empowerment on the other hand entails access to financial resources, income-generating activities, saving and economic independence, and financial decision power. The article also indicates that the assistance of micro-finance goes to activities such as agriculture, livestock rearing, fishing, and post-harvest processing to generate income for families. The authors have also stated the objectives of micro-finance in a way that they aspire to alleviate poverty and narrow down the gap between women and men in economic terms. The article has also aimed at assessing the constraints faced by rural women to access credit services from microfinance institutions, and loan repayment processes and to elucidate strategic measures for empowering rural women.
The authors have justified and indicated why they chose the study area. The district of Dandi and one micro-finance institution were purposely selected. Using simple random sampling techniques, four villages were established. Besides, 164 female respondents were randomly selected for a household questionnaire survey. The research employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data collection instruments such as semi-structured questionnaires, key informant interviews, and FGD were employed. The quantitative data employed SPSS software for analysis, while the qualitative data used analysis like narration, document analysis, content analysis, and description.
The finding reveals that the main motivating factors to join microfinance are self-motivation, social capital, and family influence. Concerning the constraints, the study further found that distance from microfinance institutions, lack of awareness, unnecessary bureaucracy, and insufficient collateral were mentioned as major constraints for accessing loan services from micro-finance institutions. The study also uncovers that mistrust between the group members, using loans for other purposes, lack of training, failure of the business, lack of follow-up, and unwillingness to pay back the loan were constraints for rural women in the loan repayment process in the area.
To address the prevailing challenges, the authors have suggested the following strategic recommendations. The article recommends the stakeholders namely the government, NGOs, and micro-finance institutions play their roles to assist rural women in economic empowerment, and loan services and to engage them in income-generating activities.Â