Gender in niGeria report 2012 - Economic Commission for Africa

Gender in Nigeria Report 2012: Improving the Lives of Girls and Women in Nigeria 25
5 EDUCATION AND
OPPORTUNITY IN NIGERIA
Research on the role that education plays in development
emphasizes its capacity to transform the long term position of
women in society (Ganguli et al., 2011). Its centrality to women’s
empowerment is underscored by the adoption of a target in the
Millennium Development Goals that seeks to “eliminate gender
disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005
and in all levels of education no later than 2015”.
The role of maternal education in relation to child survival and better nutritional outcomes
is also well established. Table 24 shows that nearly 80% of children whose mothers
are educated are well nourished compared with just under 50% of children whose
mothers did not go to school. Table 23 confirms the strong association between healthseeking
behavior and mothers’ education. Apart from the moral question of equality
of opportunity, a growing body of evidence suggests that providing equal access to
education, and specifically providing education to girls, is good economics, because it
makes labour markets more efficient, enhances growth rates and helps reduce social
disparities (Morrison et al., 2007). Figure 3 indicates how equality of opportunity can
enhance social outcomes.
5.1 Education, gender and
empowerment in Nigeria
The evidence is overwhelming that unequal opportunity in education explains at least
part of the income disparity highlighted in the preceding section. In this section we
review the literature on gender disparity in education in Nigeria and present evidence