EVALUATION OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AND GENDER EQUALITY GOAL OF THE MDG IN ONDO STATE
Abstract
The Millennium Development Goals intend as goal number three to “Promote gender equality & empower women†This was to be achieved through the following target foci: Eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015, increasing the ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education, share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector and proportion of seats held by women in national parliament. This paper attempts to examine the issues in women empowerment and gender equality in Ondo state. It also examined the effects of the MDG gender empowerment programmes on the socio-economic life of the women in the study area. One hundred and ten sets of questionnaire designed for this study were purposively distributed to the study target in three Local Government Areas in Ondo State. The mean age of the respondents was 40 and 60% of the respondents were married while 40 % were unmarried. 70% of the respondents of the respondents benefitted from empowerment loan while 30% benefitted from skill acquisition programme. Further finding show that as at the time of study, women had not occupied the office of governor or deputy governor in Ondo state since 1999; one woman was elected into the House of Representatives in 1999 and one into the State House of Assembly in 2007 and two women were elected into the State House in the 4th Republic, one of them emerging as the Speaker in the dying hours of the 4th Republic. Probit regression model was used to analyze the hypotheses. The variables tested show that the MDG had significant effects on housing type, access to healthcare, assets acquisition and acquisition of education.
KEY WORDS: Women-empowerment, Gender-equality, Millennium Development Goals, Skill-Â Â acquisition
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