Women Participation in Leadership Position: the case of selected Public Organizations in Dinsho Town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Globally, dramatic progress is shown in number of women who participate in leadership positions. However, even though the extensive effort to increase the number of women in organizational leadership has been made, different researches on the participation rate of women in leadership shows modest results and there is scant knowledge and empirical evidence on status of women’s participation in leadership positions in Dinsho town and factors affecting it. Thus, the main objective of this study was to investigate the status of women’s participation in leadership positions in the case of some public organizations in Dinsho town. This study adopted descriptive and explanatory research designs and quantitative research approach. To obtain relevant data for the study, both primary and secondary data sources were employed. The primary data were gathered through self-developed questionnaires. 33 public organizations in Dinsho town were targeted in the research and 10 organizations were purposively selected from these organizations as samples. As such, 146 sample respondents were chosen from 244 employees of these ten purposively selected organizations through simple random sampling technique. The data collected was analyzed and presented using both descriptive and inferential statistics such as regression analysis. The study examined the status of women participation in leadership position and factors affecting it such as social-cultural, organizational and personal factors. The study finding revealed that the status of women participation in leadership position in the study area found to be at moderate level with the overall average mean score of 3.36. Moreover, the regression analysis results indicated that social-cultural, organizational and personal factors have a significant impact on women’s participation in leadership positions. Based on the finding, it is suggested that continued improvement is needed to increase women’s participation in leadership positions in organizations under investigation.