Women’s participation in public administration in tigray, Ethiopia: institutional policy success with cultural challenge

This study assesses the participation of women in public administration, specifically in Tigray by taking Woreda Tahtay Machew as case study. Basically, primary data source was employed to gather first-hand information to achieve the objectives of the research. The sources of primary data were women employees in town and rural institutions. The study area consists of 31 public institutions and nineteen rural kebeles having 1669 government employees who have diploma and above, 995 are males and 674 are females. The researchers selected 8 public institutions through lottery method sampling from the town district and purposively were selected three rural kebeles from the 19 rural kebeles institutions. From 134 women employees, 84 were selected from the town districts, and 67 were selected from 108 women employees on the rural kebeles. As to the finding, there are two conflicting value systems with regard to the participation of women on the public administration. The state value system including the laws and polices promote the empowerment of women at all levels. On the other hand, the cultural value system restrain women’s from being part of the decision making process. The participation of women in public administration of woreda Tahtay Machew is still at infant level, but the rate has been increasing from time to time due to different measures taken by the government.