Employment generation programmes and women empowerment in Nigeria

Abstract

Women employment and empowerment is the critical goal of employment programme in Nigeria in driving productive and sustainable economy. Thus, this study objectively investigates the impacts of employment generation programme on women empowerment in Ogun State, Nigeria. The researcher adopts descriptive survey research method and use a self-constructed questionnaire to elicit information from the randomly selected respondents. One Hundred and Twenty (120) respondents of the total population (comprising of women beneficiaries of the employment generation programme of the skill acquisition outfits at Ijebu-Ode, and Ijebu-Ibefun as well as that of the Ogun State Ministry of Women Affairs) were sampled. The data collated was analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency count, simple percentage and mean (using a cut-off mean score of 0.5 rating scale) to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested with Chi-square at P<0.05. The result shows that demographic characteristics (i.e. marital status, educational qualification and employment status) do have significant influence on the women empowerment programmes as it is positively embarked on by young, married and highly educated women. It was also realized that although, training centres, catering tools, tie and dye materials and cloth sewing machine were moderately available facilities for women empowerment programme; their availability and diverse activities during the programme is not significantly determined the women sustainable empowerment. The result also revealed major persistent challenge of the programme is highly unemployed women community. Thus, the study justifiably recommends that incorporation of more entrepreneurs, accommodation of more young school leavers, provision of more training tools and motivating interest of learning with attractive compensation can go a long way in assuring the quality of employment programmes to ensure stable and productive empowerment of women community.