Constraint to Women’s Participation in Agricultural Production in Rural Areas of Kaduna State, Nigeria

Despite the increasing advocate for women empowerment through equitable policy framework , many women in rural areas still face serious obstacles that frustrate their attempt to secure qualitative livelihood from farming activities. The major aim of this paper is to examine the constraints faced by rural women farmers towards actualizing their aim for household food security and improved income from farming enterprises. To achieve the aim and objectives, questionnaire survey of 280 women systematically drawn from four rural districts of Sabon-Gari and Giwa Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kaduna state was employed .Descriptive statistics such as frequency table, and percentages were employed to analyse the data collected while Student’s t-test was used to validate the hypothesis. From the results, about 70% of sampled women farmers practice farming on a subsistence basis. Also, 96% claim that their productive potential is not maximized while 83.64% encounter several socio-economic constraints among which were financial and socially-embedded constraints with 33.18% and 87.27% responses respectively. The result of the Student’s t test reveals that the critical t value of 2.179 with 12 degrees of freedom is significant at 0.05 level .Consequently, the hypothesis that similar financial and socio-cultural constraints face women farmer’s agricultural activities is rejected. The results revealed that constraints faced by women farmers tend to reduce with increasing urbanization though further study is needed in this direction. Conclusion was based on the recommendations that there should be formulation and implementation of women-biased landholding and titling policies through modification of the present land tenure system, creating a financial credit pool for women using the Welfare Departments of local government councils, and organizing women farmers into functional women cooperatives for easy access to loans and farm input.Key words: Constraints, women farmers, rural area, Giwa LGA, Sabon-Gari LGA