Women Participation in Onion Selling and its Effect on Household Income in Moshi Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

The study main objective was to explore factors influencing women participation in onion selling and its effects on household income in Moshi Municipality. The study specifically aimed to: determine sociodemographic factors that influence women participation in onion selling, determine selling factors that contribute to increase in household income and to examine constraints that hinder women participation in onion selling. The study was carried out using a cross sectional design. Data were collected through key informant interview, documentary review and household survey method. The study involved 80 respondents in Moshi District. Through the use of binary logistic regression socio-economic factors that influence women's participation in selling onions were that number of dependants, education level, household head, experience, market accessibility and access to credit were observed to be most influencing factors among other. Those factors were observed to have p value less than0.05 which implies the observed effect is statistically significant. Onion selling factors that had greater contribution on increasing household income were selling time, price of onions, size of the onions, quantity of onions and access to market. These factors were observed to be statistically acceptable as the KMO test. It is concluded that the main constraints that hinder onion selling were observed to be low prices of onions and less assurance of getting customers. The study recommends that women should sell their onions at the right time so as to enable the to obtain better prices of their onions which in return will contribute to increase in household income.