Statistical analysis on the factors that hinder women participation in social, political and economic activities in Tanzania: the case of Dar es salaam, Lindi, Mwanza, Rukwa and Tabora regions.

This study is about women’s participation in social, political and economic activities. Its objective is to analyze the factors that hinder women from participating in social, political and economic activities in mainland Tanzania. The study was thus developed on the assumption that the background status of women (level of education, type of place of residence, marital status, religion, region of residence and age groups) contributes to their poor participation in social, political and economic activities. Furthermore, the study assumes that, the factors have different levels of magnitude, meaning that there are factors which contribute more to women’s poor participation in social, political and economic activities. The study also assumes that place of residence has great effect on women’s poor participation in social, political and economic activities. Cross-tabulation is used to establish the relationship between variables by taking into account observed and expected values. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine the relative importance of the factors that hinder women’s participation in social, political and economic activities, and to eliminate any that did not contribute significantly to explaining the variance in participation, once other factors were taken into account. Generally the results have shown that, place of residence, age group and region of residence have an impact on women’s participation in social, political and economic activities, and that the factors have different levels of magnitude meaning that, age group, region of residence and place of residence contribute more to women’s poor participation than level of education and religion. Place of residence (Urban, Rural) has a great effect to women’s participation in social, political and economic activities, as the study observes that women in rural areas have little knowledge of loan programmes compared with urban women, and women in rural areas work more than urban ones.