Women Empowerment and Its Impact on Agricultural Productivity : The case of Kersa district in eastern Harerghe zone, Ethiopia

The overall objective of this study is to analyze the impact of women empowerment on agricultural productivity. Cross sectional data collected from a total of 150 randomly selected respondents were used in this study. Seven key indicators of empowerment combining both quantitative and qualitative data, covering four dimensions of empowerment were chosen for this purpose. Finally, a cumulative empowerment index (CEI) was developed by adding the obtained weighted scores of the seven empowerment indicators based on which the respondent where classified in to empowered and non-empowered women. The distribution of CEI demonstrates that 38.7% of women are empowered at varying level of empowerment whereas, 61.3% of the women are concentrated in non-empowerment category. Moreover, Cobb-Douglas (CD) production function was applied to estimate the productivity difference in agriculture between the two groups. Results of the study show that empowered women farmer (EWF) own more productive resources such as land, oxen, labor and other agricultural inputs as compared to non-empowered women farmer (NEWF).