Poverty is a widespread problem that affects many people in the world. The majority of the poor in developed and developing worlds are women, who are as many as 70 percent of the world’s poor. The study examines the prevalence and determinants of rural poverty among female-headed households in the study area. The research approach of this study is mixed research approach and explanatory-sequential mixed research design was employed. Primary data source was used for the study. The survey questionnaires were collected from 203 sampled women headed households selected using a simple random sampling technique from 2 kebeles of the study area. Qualitative data were collected from six key informants and sixteen /16/ focus group discussants and the data were analyzed thematically. The food energy intake approach and income were employed to identify households as poor and non-poor. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data. The binary logistic regression model was employed to identify the determinants of rural female headed household’s poverty. The FGT method of the poverty measures showed that the headcount ratio, poverty gap and severity indices of food poverty and absolute poverty the survey households were 0.418, 0.087 and 0.028, and 0.472, 0.159 and 0.074 respectively. The binary logistic regression model revealed that age, marital status, educational level, family size, dependency ratio, extension services, total crop income, market distance, and remittance were significantly predicted variables for the dependent variable on rural female headed household’s poverty in the study area. The study concludes that there was a high prevalence of poverty headcount ratio, gap and severity in the study area. Hence, the government should work on gender sensitive policies that to reduce rural poverty of female headed households such as increasing access to education, increase family planning, increasing crop productivity, and increase access to extension service are essential policy interventions to better reduce rural female headed household poverty. Keywords: Poverty,