Gender in niGeria report 2012 - Economic Commission for Africa

6 Gender in Nigeria Report 2012: Improving the Lives of Girls and Women in Nigeria
be denied access to political representation, services and assets in the State where
they have settled. Many but not all, of these ethnic groups have a patrilineal system
of kinship, tracing descent, identity and inheritance through the male line. This has
important social and economic implications for the position of Nigerian women and
girls. The North-Eastern and North-Western states are predominantly Muslim whereas
the South is predominantly Christian. Power and economic prosperity are not evenly
distributed among different groups and the impact of horizontal inequalities will be
discussed later on.
2.3 Gender and demography in
Nigeria
80.2 million (49%) of Nigeria’s 162.5 million people are women, although only
15% of households are categorised de jure as female-headed. Figures are not
available on the number of households managed by women, but there are suggestions
that the high rate of male migration, especially in rural areas, means that de facto
female-headed households are a substantial majority (Chukwuezi, 1999). 2 Some
39% of the population are children below the age of 15. In the mid-1980s a woman
gave birth on average to seven children. The rate fell to 5.2 by the late 1990s. These
averages mask enormous variations within the country. In the Northern States the total
fertility rate is still around seven, whereas in the South it is now between four and five. 3
It has been suggested that, if Nigeria invests now in human development, by 2030 it
could begin to reap the benefits of what some have called a “demographic dividend”. 4
Its current demographic structure could become an asset when fertility and high youth
dependency decline and the productive working population increases (PGDA, 2010).
It has been claimed that “youth not oil is the future of Nigeria in the 21 st Century”. 5 In
this paper we argue that Nigeria will only reap a “demographic dividend” if it invests
now in girls and women to ensure that future generations are healthier, educated and
empowered to contribute to economic growth and development.
2.4 Dimensions of gender disparity
in Nigeria
Women in Nigeria still form an underclass and lack equality of opportunity, both
in the contributions they make to development and the benefits they receive from it. 6
This is true of all women in Nigeria, though education, class, ethnicity, kinship, marital
status and religion play a role in mitigating or elaborating this effect. The geographical
division between the North, mainly Muslim, and the South, predominantly but not
exclusively Christian, is also an important dimension of the struggle for gender equality
(Edozie, 2007). The religious dimension has become more prominent since 1999,
when political liberalisation allowed a greater degree of freedom of worship (Nolte et al.,
2010). To date 12 States, mainly in the North, have adopted Sharia Law. To this North/
South divide can be added a rural-urban divide, both in the North and in the South of
the country. Like much of Africa, quality of life tends to be better in urban communities,
owing in part to lack of investment in rural infrastructure and services. There is also a
North-South divide between urban centres, because those in the industrial South tend
to offer better conditions than those in the North. Within both North and South, State
capitals tend to have better conditions than smaller towns in their regions.
2 In fact, some recent work suggests that as much as 44.5% of rural households are headed by women (Oluwatayo, 2009:12).
3 See Bongaarts (2010).
4 See PGDA (2010), and Bloom and Canning (2011).
5 PGDA (2010: 8).
6 See, for example, UNECA, Africa Women’s Report, 2009.