Women in non farm micro enterprise development and rural poverty reduction in Kassena-Nankana district of northern Ghana

Poverty is widespread in rural Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana and has had adverse implications on household incomes, nutrition and health, education and accessibility to potable water among rural households. In its gender dimension, rural women are among the poorest of the poor owing to the following: firstly, that women have limited ownership and decision-making influence over household agriculture resources owing to a patriarchal orientation of hoùseholds; and secondly, that the impact of poverty is much felt by wonien as it directly impinge on their reproductive and normative roles in the household. In order to improve upon their situation, women have long been engaged in ttaditional non-farm enterprises as an economic means to support efforts at meeting household basic necessities. Their handicap is their low production arising from the underdevelopment of the very non-farm enterprises that they are engaged in. Whereas their underdevelopment underpin that problems besiege these enterprises, their survival and tie to subsistence of household point to potèntialities of these enterprises. The study in this light, set out to find out whether rural Women's Entrepreneurs were contributing to household poverty reduction from these non-farm enterprises that they engage in.