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The Contribution Of Women Organisations In Community Development In Nigeria
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
It is a
truism the adage that says; behind every successful man is a woman.
Women have been regarded as fragile and should be subordinate to the man
but they can play very important role for the betterment of the
society. This fragile nature has proved her taking domineering influence
on many occasions in the history of mankind. Across the country, women
have created innovative, comprehensive programs to meet the needs of
their communities. Women have established themselves as leaders in the
community development process and acquire the skills that have brought
positive changes to their communities. As effective builders of social
capital, Christian women leaders play key roles in establishing and
maintaining important relationships and networks in their communities.
They
are facing the challenges of racial, culture, economic and political
barriers that exist in the community development process and in many
cases overcoming those barriers become their motivation. While their
comprehensive approach has influenced the evolution of the community
development field, Christian women’s contributions have been neither
widely acknowledged nor explicitly credited. The result of the Christian
women groups in community development study provide deeper insights
into women’s thinking about community development, the barriers they
perceive to women’s leadership and the kind of efforts that should be
made to facilitate and promote their status and roles in the field.
Christian women groups demonstrate variety of effective ways women
create social capital that is central to the existence of healthy
communities. In fact, the contributions of Christian women groups in
community development projects can bring about significant positive
changes. Thus, Christian’s women groups have been proved to be one of
the effective entry point for initiating activities or development
projects in the community that are beneficiary to all the members of the
community (Chiwendu, 1980). Therefore, for effective development to
occur, their contributions need not be disputed.
1.2 Statement to the Problem
The
cultural beliefs that the education of a woman ends in the kitchen,
makes it almost impossible for males to see the immense contributions of
women groups to the community development. For example, through picture
books, girls are taught to have low aspirations because there are so
few opportunities portrayed as available to them. It is believed that
men’s work is outside the home and women’s work is inside the home. For
example we see women at home washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, yell at
the children, takes care of babies, and does the shopping, while men are
store keepers, house builders, storytellers, monks, preachers,
fishermen, policemen, fighters, soldiers, adventurers, judges, farmers
and pilots. They were also the king and the gods.
Within the
traditional African society, women from almost all the ethnic group were
excluded from performing certain activities, especially those that
concern leadership and other hand and significant activities like
construction works and clergy roles, these were considered as men’s
domain. The exclusion of women from some of these activities are due to
the socio-cultural factors constraining them from participating in
activities that were considered to be exclusively for men (William,
1973).
Furthermore gender inequality contributes to the low
contribution of women to community development. Many a times, we hear
the men ask, “Don’t you know you are a woman? This question is due to
the systematic
gender bias in customs, beliefs and attitudes that
confine women mostly to the domestic sphere and not in certain matters
expected to be in the men’s domain. Also, the economic and domestic
workloads deprived women of time to contribute to community development.
Finally
laws and customs also impede women’s access to credit, productive
inputs, employment, education, information and politics. These factors
affect women’s ability and incentives to contribute in economic and
social development activities in the community. The purpose of this
research is to find out the contributions of Christian women’s groups to
community development, since it is believed that “what a man can do, a
woman can do betterâ€. The challenges facing them in their bid to
contribute will also be reviewed.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This project analysed the contributions of women organisations in the community development in mbaise Local Government Area in imo state. semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 120 randomly selected women from the chosen communities. Data analysis were achieved using simple descriptive statistics as percentages, frequency tables and ranking. Result of the study shows that women organisations for the purpose of community development in the study area are formed at different l ... Continue reading---
