Social Cultural Factors Influencing the Participation of Women in the Implementation of Community Projects in Kilifi County, Kenya

Abstract

All over the world, review of advancement achieved by women in community development is of immense concern. There is still an imbalance between women and men in the work place in the world today. This has resulted in to project failure causing social and cultural concerns such as unemployment, stereotypes, social segregation, patriarchy, early marriages, prostitution, and high rate of divorces, the high level of poverty, radicalization/extremism and use of hard drug. The purpose of this study was to examine the social cultural factors influencing the participation of women in the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County, Kenya. The study focused on three independent variables; Level of knowledge on projects, Religious Tradition and, Level attitudes towards work. The study had three objectives; firstly, to determine the extent to which level of knowledge on projects influence the participation of women in the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. Secondly, to assess the influence of religious tradition on the level of participation of women in the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. Lastly, to examine the influence of attitudes towards work on the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. Literature has indicated that there is existence of deep community rooted stereotyping about women which constitutes barriers to women advancement. This makes women not capable to compete equally with men at community level. Such leaving them more marginalized. The study employed the use of a descriptive survey research design. The target populations for the study were women living in Town ward Malindi Sub- County. A sample size of 249 women was drowned from 3 zones of Town ward Malindi sub-county. This study used questionnaires as the instruments for data collection. Pilot testing was conducted to 30 women from one of the areas not selected for the actual study. Spearman’s Ranks co-relation method was used to generate a co-efficient. The tool was determined to be reliable since a strong positive coefficient of 0.702 was achieved allowing reliability of the research instrument that was used. Data from the questionnaires was coded, tabulated and entered in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer software for windows program to enable analysis. Quantitative data was analyzed by means of various statistics as well as measures of central tendency and dispersion. Frequency and percentages statistics were used. Chi square was used to test the hypotheses. The alternative hypotheses were accepted therefore findings revealed that; the level of knowledge on projects significantly influence the participation of women in the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. The religious tradition has a significant influence of on the level of participation of women in the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. Finally the attitude towards work has significant influence on the implementation of community projects in Kilifi County. The study recommends that awareness and trainings should be done, children should be taken to school, to raise people level of knowledge. Religious traditions should be taught and well interpreted. Dogmatic cultures and traditions should be left out and upholding the constitution by meaningfully involving women in community projects. Awareness campaigns on gender should be done to abolish the Stereotyping, sex segregation and down rating of women in the society. The researcher suggests further studies on the role of religion in promoting women participation in community projects in Kilifi. Key words: Implementation, level of education, Attitude, Community Projects, Religion, Kilifi County.