No abstract

The paper addressed occupations as socio-economic qualities that determine rural women’s capabilities to install and use electric stoves in their households. The study applied the cross-sectional design through conducting a household survey. The study sample size included 210 rural women and seventeen key informants. Qualitative data was analysed through content analysis while the quantitative data was analysed by computing descriptive statistics, cross tabulation and chi-square test. The study established that majority of rural women were interested in installing electricity and using electric cookers in their households. However, households without electricity lacked income for paying the required charges to get services. Men controlled installation and usage of electric cookers in households as they were the main bread winners while women lacked income to meet the required charges. As a result, rural women were negatively affected by the burden of firewood collection and cooking that led into deforestation in the area. The study recommends that sensitization on the installation and use of electric cookers should be done to rural women to increase their awareness on the benefits of adopting them. In addition, development stakeholders should support rural women by increasing their capacity for conducting income generation activities to get higher profits.

The study examined time allocation per day among household chores versus income generation activities that influence wealth statuses of rural women in Busega District, Tanzania. Cross-sectional research design was adopted to conduct the study. The methods applied for data collection include household survey, focus group discussions, non-participant observations and documentary reviews. Qualitative data were analysed through content analysis. Quantitative data were analysed through cross-tabulation and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The results show that, the means of hours used by rural women in conducting each activity per day were lopsided on household chores. The average time shows that each rural woman used approximately 6 hours for conducting household chores and at least two hours for income generation activities per day. Furthermore, the wealth statuses were established by computing Principal Component Analysis as it was revealed that the majority 62.9% (132) of the rural women were poor having low incomes. The tercile classification took account for below TZS 200,000 indicating poor, TZS 200,001 to 600,000 for middle and TZS 600,001 and above for better-off as higher income. The study concludes that rural women’s income growth has been hampered by the burden of household chores because they were limited to participate effectively in productive activities. The paper recommends that, the government through the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Special Groups experts should foster interventions that are grounded on increasing rural women’s participation in income generation activities