Household socio-economic factors and female participation in agriculture in Uganda

Abstract

The study used the UDHS 2011 dataset to investigate the socio-economic factors affecting female labour participation in Agriculture in Uganda. The analysis was done at three levels; univariate, bivariate, and multivariate. First; an assessment of independent variables in addition to female agricultural labour participation was done. Then, t-tests were used for measuring the relationship between continuous independent variables and the dependent variable while chi square analysis was used for the categorical independent variables. At the multivariate level, a Binary Logistic Regression Model was fitted to measure the net effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable. The results showed that the highest proportion of women that were considered in this study were not participating in the agricultural labour (53.2%). While only 47 % of the women were engaged in agriculture. At the multivariate level all the five independent variables were significant at 5% significance levels, in explaining female participation in agriculture. Women with primary, secondary and tertiary education had reduced odds of participating in female agricultural labour force (OR=0.79: OR=0.41: OR=0.11 respectively) compared to those who had no education at all. While women residing in rural areas participated in agriculture (OR=3.4) compared to those residing in urban. In addition, women residing in female headed households were less likely to participate in agriculture (OR=0.88) than those residing in male headed households. Further, there was a positive relationship between age of the women and female labour agricultural participation (OR=1.02). The women that listened to the radio at least once in a week were more likely to participate in agriculture (OR=1.2) when compared to those who listened to no radio at all. The study recommends agricultural education that is relevant to women farmers and creation of platforms for women involved in agriculture to share experiences on a peer to peer basis.