Belete, B. and Melak, S. (2020) ‘Impact of small-scale irrigation technology on women empowerment in Amhara national regional state of Ethiopia’, Cogent Economics and Finance, 8(1)
Agriculture based economic activity is noted as the backbone of the Ethiopian economy. In the introduction part of the paper, the author discussed how drought is affecting agricultural productivity and the role of irrigation systems as an alternative to improve productivity and reducing vulnerability to climate instability. Women’s access and engagement in irrigation have found to have a positive impact on productivity and well being of the family. Accordingly, women empowerment in the agriculture sector through promotion of a sustainable irrigation technology system is found to be effective to enhance the economic welfare of the household, health, nutrition, and education of the children. The need for irrigation technology has a multiple effect on women’s empowerment. It reduces the time spent by women on water collection responsibilities, which in turn enable women to engage in productive activities and income generation.
The author used household survey data collected from two Woredas of Bahir Dar town, Amhara Regional state, Ethiopia. 201 randomly selected farm households participated in the study. Regarding the sampling method, the author used multistage stratified random sampling. To measure women’s economic employment, the author used Women Empowerment Agricultural Index (WEAI which is the latest index developed in 2012 by OPHI as a direct indicator of economic empowerment and gender parity at household and individual level. Descriptive statistics and econometric analysis were employed to analyse the data.
The study found that women are more disempowered when it comes to control over the use of income, time, and access to credit. They lack power to sole or joint control over the use of income and expenditure. Compared to the other indicators, fewer women are disempowered in terms of asset ownership and group membership. On the other hand, the finding of the study indicated that women are empowered in terms of autonomy in production. Regarding household heads, female headed household heads have 42.1% opportunities to adopt irrigation technology when compared with male headed households. Education is also found to have a positive impact on adoption of irrigation technology. Accordingly, more educated households have a better understanding of the advantages and use of irrigation technology.
Generally, the study showed that women empowerment status in the household adopting the technology is lower than the non-adopting households. This is due to the reason that the use and operation of the irrigation technology hugely relies on whether women in the household have farm related decision-making roles or not. As indicated above women lack the decision-making role in household farming activities, as a result the adoption of the irrigation technology doesn’t serve any purpose for women. Moreover, women empowerment is determined by multiple social, cultural, and religious factors, as a result the mere fact of adopting the technology doesn’t serve the end purpose of empowering women.
Accordingly, the author recommended that policy makers, and development interventions should target women empowerment by closing the gender gap, ensuring access to productive resources, use and control of income. Moreover, intervention in small scale irrigation shall target at enhancing women decision making role in the agricultural sector, promote labour saving irrigation technology and reduce women household burdens.