Participation of elderly women in community welfare activities in Akinyele local government, Oyo State, Nigeria

This paper assessed the participation of elderly women in community welfare activities in Oyo State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 120 elderly women from six out of the twelve political wards in the study area. Both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection were used to elicit information from the respondents. A focus group discussion was conducted with the elderly women groups, in each of the six wards. Frequency counts and percentages were used to summarise the data, while chi-square and the multinomial logit regression model were also used to analyse the data. There were significant relationships between the level of participation of rural elderly women in community welfare activities and age (X(2) = 81.50, P = 0.05), marital status(X(2) = 3.84, P = 0.05), educational status (X(2) = 196.07, P = 0.05), religion (X(2) = 8.53, P = 0.05) and place of origin (X(2) = 51.53, P = 0.05). The study concludes that rural elderly women participate in various community welfare activities such as care of children, giving of advice on child care, maternal care,family planning,family health, mediation and resolution of conflicts, assistance with domestic chores,family nutrition, children education on basic skills and good morals. It is therefore recommended that rural elderly women should be involved in rural development issues since they have a wealth of knowledge on various community welfare issues.