CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISES ON ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENTS OF WOMEN MEMBER THE CASE OF CHIRO TOWN, WEST HARARGHE ZONE, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Most African countries including Ethiopia had been using MSEs as one of the major area for improving job creations mainly for women through which their economic empowerment is sustainably realized. Based on this thousands of MSEs had been created in all regional states of the country out of which Chiro woreda of Oromia Regional State is the one where thousands of youth including women have been involving in different MSE sectors. The specific objectives were to measure economic empowerments of women participating in MSEs’, identifying major challenges of MSEs development in relation to economically empowering women in the study area, investigate the effects of challenges and opportunities of MSEs on women’s member economic empowerment. Data were collected from 319 women respondents that were selected from five MSEs sub-sectors; namely, trade, service, urban agriculture, construction and manufacturing through purposive sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and econometric model were used to analyze data. The result indicated service sector MSEs as the sector in which women involvement is high (70%) and urban agriculture as the sector in which women involvement is relatively lowest (33.3%) The results of correlation analysis showed managerial factor was significantly correlated with income generation with strong correlation coefficient (0.771) while tax, infrastructure and raw materials had moderately correlated with income generation of women with -0.44, -0.434, and -0.563 respectively. Technology and marketing skills factors towards income generations had weak correlation with the income generations of women members the sampled MSEs in the study area with -0.192, and -0.302 .302 correlation coefficients respectively. Tobit model analysis showed managerial status, educational level, access to work places, access to technology and infrastructures were the statistically significant factors affecting women empowerment. The findings imply that attention is needed from concerned organizations and offices to improve access to finance, working premise, and managerial skills and members marketing skill to create an enabling working environment for MSEs to improve the income of women members from this sector.