Vol. 2, Issue 8, Part F (2016)

Abstract
Rural women belong to the most deprived section of the society facing adverse conditions in terms of social oppression and economic inequality, a visible majority of them being poor. Hence, due to these facts the government of Ethiopian has been implemented policies to address women's strategic gender needs through improving their access to resources and their decision-making power. Besides, rural women's affairs departments have been set up in the relevant line ministries as well as in the prime minister's office. Therefore, this paper analysis the gender related constraints that affect their empowerment, and status of rural women empowerment. The methodology of this study is an integration of quantitative and qualitative methods based on data collected from four cooperative societies in the study areas. Data were collected from 142 household respondents by employing systematic random sampling technique from sampled four RUSACCOs and data also collected from 32 purposively selected respondents by FGD and KI interview during January-March 2016. The finding shows that, in aggregate terms there is an improvement and significant change of rural women status in all selected empowerment dimensions after joining rural saving and credit cooperative. Moreover, the result of binary logistic analysis shows that, mobility, age, access to mass media, utilization of loan by herself and educational statues of the respondents were highly important in influencing women empowerment in rural saving and credit cooperative. Therefore, priority should be given to these factors while strategy and policy aimed to implement for rural women empowerment by concerned bodies.