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 (X2 = 81.50, P = 0.05), marital
status(X2 = 3.84, P = 0.05), educational status (X2 =196.07, P = 0.05),
religion (X2 = 8.53, P = 0.05) and place of origin (X2 = 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.