A STUDY ON RURAL WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN DELTA STATE

ABSTRACT

This study investigates rural women participation in education for national development in Delta State. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study and a self-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The population of the study was 259, 900. The simple random sampling technique was used and a sample size of 306 rural women was sampled for the study. The research instrument used for the study was a self-structured questionnaire. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. Twenty (20) respondents were randomly selected using the test-retest reliability method with a correlation coefficient of 0.84 which was obtained, thereby indicating that the instrument was reliable. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency percentages to analyze the respondents’ bio-data, while mean and standard deviation was used in answering the research questions, and t-test of independent samples statistics was used in testing the formulated hypotheses. The findings revealed that rural women involvement in educational planning was to a high extent, there were community restrictions to rural women participation in literacy education, also factors such as poverty, religious prejudice, social prejudices, culture, negative attitude and so on were responsible for low participation of rural women in education. Findings also showed that effects of low participation in education by rural women include inability to use technology, inability to contribute to national development, rigidity towards change, and so on. Conclusively, strategies that could be employed to encourage rural women’s participation in education for national development include: more funds allocation, government creation of awareness and more female instructors, flexible time table for literacy programme, and so on. It was concluded that all necessary modalities and an enabling environment be created by the government, NGOs and other important stakeholders to help in motivating women especially those in rural areas into getting literacy education so that they can be educated, employable and be able to contribute effectively to national development. It was chiefly recommended that government should create awareness as well as more female instructors to help in motivating rural women toward getting literacy education.