Global Journal of Human Social Science, E: Economics, Volume 22 Issue 7

Furthermore, 52.55 percent of rural women didn’t discuss family planning with health workers. On literacy, 45.42 percent of the rural women can’t read at all; 14.17 percent can read part of a sentence and 40.42 percent can read a whole sentence. Again, 66.47 percent of the women have visited health care facility in the last 12 months; and majority (84.41%) of women in rural Zambia use less than 30 minutes to fetch water. Also, almost all the rural women (97.34%) rely on wood and charcoal as a type of cooking fuel. b) Estimates for Women Empowerment As presented in section 2.2.4, the computation of women empowerment index in this study is based on the Alkire-Foster (2007) methodology. Women empowerment in this study is measured by using five domains: Agency, Income, Resources, Leadership and Time/Workload. The aggregates of these domains across the various indicators was used to compute the multidimensional women empowerment index. Following Alkire et al (2013; 2011) and Obayelu and Chime (2020), five cut offs were used in this study. Alkire et al (2013) suggested that a respondent’s level of deprivation should at least be below a third of the total number of indicators to be considered as poor. They also made a distinction between vulnerable poor and severe poverty by using a cutoff of 20 percent and 50 percent respectively. Based on this the cutoffs for this study is: 20%, 33%, 50%, 66% and 80%. Table 2: Multidimensional disempowerment index Disempowerment cut off ( k ) Multidimensional disempowerment index ( 0 M ) Multidimensional disempowerment headcounts ( 0 H ) Intensity disempowerment ( A ) Empowerment index ( 0 1 M − ) 1 0.347 0.926 0.363 0.653 2 0.224 0.489 0.458 0.776 3 0.178 0.363 0.49 0.822 4 0.010 0.013 0.722 0.990 5 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.999 Source: Authors Own Construct (July 2020) From table 2 below, at K=1, rural women multidimensional disempowerment ( 0 H ) is 92.6 percent and the intensity of disempowerment is 36.3 percent. The multidimensional disempowerment decreased to 48.9 percent at K=2 and a further decrease to 36.3 percent at K=3. At K=4 and K=5, the multidimensional disempowerment was 1.3 percent and 1 percent respectively. This indicates that there is an inverse relationship between the multidimensional disempowerment index and the cutoff ( k ). That is, as K increased the multidimensional disempowerment index decreases. Several studies found the inverse relationship (Obayelu and Chime, 2020; Popoola and Adeoti, 2016; Ayevbuomwan et al., 2016; Batana and Duclos, 2008). i. Relative contribution of dimensions to women disempowerment Out of the five dimensions, time/workload contributed the highest percentage to women’s disempowerment at K=1 (31.2%), K=2 (27.3%) and K=3 (26.4%). At K=4, income contributed the highest percent of 22.9% and at the final cutoff (K=5), agency, income and time had the same share of contribution towards women’s disempowerment (23.5%). The findings is in contrast with Popoola and Adeoti (2016) who found resource and education as the highest contributor to women disempowerment at K=1 and K=2 respectively. Table 3: Relative contribution of domains to women disempowerment Dimensions Agency (percent) Income (percent) Resources (percent) Leadership (percent) Time (percentage) K=1 0.154 0.144 0.246 0.144 0.312 K=2 0.188 0.167 0.227 0.145 0.273 K=3 0.181 0.179 0.231 0.145 0.264 K=4 0.196 0.236 0.229 0.132 0.208 K=5 0.235 0.235 0.176 0.118 0.235 Source: Authors Own Construct (July 2020) Volume XXII Issue VII Version I 10 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals E Assessment of the Key Indicators and Dimensions of Women Empowerment in Rural Zambia