Fighting Hunger Together: A Case of Women Farmers’

Food security remains a major challenge for most rural householdsin kenya especially those in arid and semi arid areas. womenplay a crucial role as primary food producers and custodians ofhousehold food security. they however face many constraints intheir endeavor to secure food for their households. women, lackaccess to extension education, land and credit and these challengesare exacerbated by effects of climatic variability, especially drought.in response to the difficulties facing them, women in mwala haveformed organizations (women groups) as safety-nets to help themface these challenges collectively rather than as individuals. thisstudy research was designed to investigate how women’s participationin the groups influences them to overcome constraintsrelated to their household food security. the study used a crosssectional survey design. a sample of 156 respondents was selectedthrough simple random sampling, with 94 women farmers beinggroup members and 62 non group members. ten key informantswere purposively sampled from group leaders of the most activewomen groups influenced in agricultural activities to participate ina focus group discussion. the data was analysed using spsspackage version 17 and presented using frequencies, percentages,multiple regression, and spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.the study revealed that household food security is significantly andpositively influenced by participation of women farmers in womengroups (f = 9.980, p < 0.001), that the level of intensity of participationin group activities did not significantly influence household foodsecurity (x2 =.112) and that linking with outside agencies waspositively and significantly correlated to group performance measuredin terms of benefits availed to the members through their groups.