The Effect of Agricultural Cooperative Membership on Women’s Empowerment: A Case of Rural Ashanti, Ghana
Description
The main objective of this study was to assess women’s empowerment with the Women Empowerment in Agricultural Index (WEAI) tool and to examine the effect of membership in agricultural cooperatives on women’s empowerment by employing a propensity score matching model and endogenous treatment regression model. We interviewed 106 women farmers (75 cooperative members and 31 non-members) from the rural Ashanti region of Ghana through structured questionnaire in 7 districts. The study showed a statistically significant relationship between agricultural cooperative membership and empowerment levels among female farmers. All interviewed women members of cooperatives had higher empowerment scores in four out of five domains than non-members. The dataset is in two views. The labelled show the value labels (e.g. marital status = widowed) and the values sheet shows the numbers that were assigned to the labels (e.g. marital status = 6 [which is widowed].