Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in Nigeria: The Desirability and Inevitability of a Pragmatic Approach

Abstract

Promoting gender equality has become a globally recognized and an acceptable reality. Gender issues have also been identified as critical to the achievement of national development goals. In fact, the attainment of gender equality is not only seen as an end in itself it is equally a catalyst to, and a sine-qua-non for the achievement of sustainable development. This paper which attempted an assessment of the level of attainment of gender parity and women empowerment using three critical indicators namely: enrolment in education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, employment and political decision-making, utilized valuable secondary sources of data. The paper which argues that, at the heart of the problematic of gender disparity in Nigeria, is the action dilemma by the Nigerian government which has compounded the problem of expanding the capacity level that is required to enhance the opportunity of accommodating the varying needs of both male and female gender also contends that the attainment of gender equality in Nigeria which is already time-barred, will be a mirage due to multi-dimensional constraining factors. This paper which subsequently hinged the actualization of gender equality and women empowerment on tile desirability and inevitability of a pragmatic approach, concluded with some useful remarks.

Keywords: Gender equality, women empowerment, Nigeria, pragmatic approach.