The role of peasant rural women in Kenya's economic development: a case study of Nkararo location

Abstract

In the rural area per capita income is low and so is the living standard. Increasing productivity, income and living standards is a priority. The majority of rural population are peasant rural women involved in agribusiness and whose productivity is low leading to low household incomes. The challenge is to sustainably increase productivity of small holders. The research issue was to identify barriers faced by rural women in development and propose strategies to promote integration of women as a development resource in local economies for rapid, sustainable and equitable economic growth. A case study of a busy agribusiness rural area was done. The focus was on five objectives (a) women entrepreneurship, (b) access to skills and technologies, (c) access to inputs (d) access to land and (e) culture. The first three were study variables while culture and land were treated as independent attribute variables. The following secondary sources were used to inform the descriptive research design and compliment its results: government policy papers, commissioned study reports from ministries of agriculture, and livestock and development plans. Three techniques used for descriptive research were personal interviews done by the researcher, observation and send-out questionnaire. A survey was done in one location. Thirty peasant rural women, ten peasant rural males, five rural development organizations and five civic/opinion leaders were involved.