Page 45 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Mbu Daniel Tambi, Mah-Soh Glennice Fosah: Econometric Modelling of Women
Empowerment and Agricultural Production in Cameroon

Table 3. Reduced Form Estimates of Women Empowerment in Cameroon
Variables Coefficient Standard. P-value
Error
Women Empowerment
Cost of consultation_mpu -.0690708* .0387713 0.075
Access to agricultural financing -.1149736 .100877 0.255
Marital status (1 = married) -.2744878*** .0715876 0.000
Access to credit 1.14e-07 .0000138 0.993
Socio-economic status (1 = non poor) -.2835463*** .0826475 0.001
Log of fertilizer used .4798709*** .0875117 0.000
Use of modern agricultural equipment .0806937 .0973491 0.407
Agricultural primary activity -.0292124*** .0110895 0.009
Log of cost of seeds -.105636*** .0300784 0.000
Log of farm size -.1091168 .0695524 0.117
Cost of fertilizer .0001522 .0003116 0.625
Formal Agricultural training -.0010288*** .0003791 0.007
Household size -.0317858** .0129371 0.014
Age .0011606 .0021097 0.582
Use specialized seeds (1= yes) -.060088 .1037274 0.563
Place of residence (1= Urban) -.3187917*** .0862248 0.000
Cons -1.43611* .8453429 0.090
R-squared = 0.1637
2
Chi = 11.44 (16, 935; 0.0000)
Observation = 952
Computed by author from ECAM4, using STATA 14.2
Note: Values in parentheses represent robust t-statistics while ***, **, * indicate
1%, 5% and 10% level of significance respectively.

With regards to socio economic status, women who are non-poor have a decreasing effect
on empowerment with the results being statistically significant at 1% level of significance.
This is contrary to expectations as women with better socioeconomic status have better
access to resources that expands their capabilities, thus their empowerment. It disagrees
with Bahiigwa (1999) who showed that household wealth is a positive and significant
determinant of women empowerment However, this effect may be complex and
ambiguous because of the work-leisure trade-offs. Furthermore, the results reveal that
women whose primary activity is agriculture tend to disempowered as indicated by a
decrease in women empowerment by 2%, significant at 1% level of significance. This
may be because most of the women involved in agriculture depend solely on it for survival
but use crude traditional methods and lack the necessary training and finance needed to
boost the output as well as their wellbeing. Secondly, the reason may be because most
women involved in agriculture tend to be associated with low levels of education which
is also a limitation to women empowerment.

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