Abstract: The study confronted the poor participation of youths and women in local development activities and programs noted within the city of Gweru. It sought to establish factors influencing how youths and women perceive the concept of democratic participation in the local development programs. A survey was conducted, collecting questionnaire data from 90 purposively selected respondents from the city of Gweru. Through application of the Mann Whitney U and the Kruskal Wallis non-parametric tests, it was revealed that the responses obtained were not affected by demographic variables of age, gender, marital status or qualification of respondents, hence, the responses could be relied upon. The study further applied the Partial Least Squares models (PLS-PM) to examine relationships between the latent variables, using factor loadings and paths coefficients. It was therefore confirmed from the inner and outer models that perceptions of residents have a significant influence on.......
Keywords: Youth, Women, Participation, Local governance
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