Women participation in decision-making in Agroforestry in Umvoti Municipality

Abstract

The study investigated the extent to which women in Umvoti Municipality participate in decision-making in Agroforestry. The study focuses on women’s participation in the decision-making in AF in Umvoti Municipality. Its purpose was to explore what was happening intending to improve the participation of women in the decision-making in AF. The study adopted a qualitative approach, which was followed by the data generation, carried out from February 2019 to July 2020, where a sample of thirty-six (36) black women participants were randomly and purposely selected from six different wards. The selected wards were Shane, Ntembisweni, Matimatolo, Mbulwane, Enseleni and Nhlalakahle covering approximately 60% of Umvoti Municipality's total population. The survey was based on women who were participating in AF but experiencing exclusion from decision-making and their willingness to participate in the survey exercise. Twenty (20) women participants were selected for observation and focus group discussions and sixteen (16) women participants were selected for individual interviews. Data were generated from six wards. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed to capture the data on the socio-economic status of participants and to identify their extent of participation in decision-making in AF. The semi structured questionnaire consisted of socio-economic information like age, educational status, number of family members and income generation. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse data generated from different selected women participants. The data generated and analysed from participants reflected that the highest proportion of the women had a high level of participation in AF practices. Further, some women had medium and low levels of participation. The highest proportion of women who participated in AF practices were those that realized the importance and benefits of AF practices and considered AF practices as the sole manner to sustain their households' livelihood, hence Umvoti women have no other option except AF practices. The study revealed that the women’s income generated from other resources is frequently spent on their household activities. Consequently, marketing of harvested AF products, children's education, household chores and childcare, work distribution, protection and management of livestock were identified as the potential sources of women’s income. Further, the study realised that women played substantial activities in fulfilling their household’s family needs by involving themselves in various job activities. Thus, the introduced AF components preferred by women must be practiced sustainably to generate higher benefits to empower women, and their contribution to AF should be encouraged. The existing empirical evidence on the degree to which women participate in AF decision-making, reveals that women comprise about 43% of the AF labour force worldwide and proceed to increase by 44,2% with a contribution of about 2 % growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in developing countries.