Women empowerment and gender equity for poverty reduction in Adamawa state Nigeria

ABSTRACT

High levels of poverty, characterized by a poor record of economic growth and high inequality in income and asset ownership, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have become major development challenges. This study is focused on how women empowerment and gender equity can be used as tools far poverty reduction. Data were collected from randomly sampled 230 households in Adamawa State Nigeria, using structured questionnaires. The data were analyzed using the Logit Regression model. The result of the study revealed that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between the education of household-head and the poverty status of the household. This suggests that the level of poverty can be reduced with improvement in the educational status of the household-heads. The result also showed that the gender of the household-head had a positive and significant relationship with poverty status. Female-headed households showed a considerable tendency towards poverty. It is recommended that the design of poverty reduction programme should focus more on improving access to education of the rural poor Also poverty reduction strategies in Nigeria should be engendered to ensure that women are targets and beneficiaries of poverty alleviation programmes