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Does expansion mean inclusion in Nigerian higher education?
Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 552 – 561 www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif
Does expansion mean inclusion in Nigerian higher education? Abiola Odejide a,⁎, Bola Akanji b , Kolade Odekunle b a
Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria b Nigeria Institute for Social and Economic Research Ibadan, Nigeria Available online 28 November 2006
Synopsis The expansion of higher education in Nigeria has been astronomical since 1948 when the first university, University of Ibadan (UI), was established. This article explores gender equity issues relating to access, curriculum transformation and staff development within the faculties of technology and agriculture at the University of Ibadan. It concludes that while gender is not explicitly on the university's agenda, university life is a highly gendered experience. Women's access to the Faculty of Technology is hampered by poor preparation at lower levels of education, male dominance of time and space and societal expectations of appropriate work for women. Affirmative action is perceived as discriminatory and counterproductive. The Agriculture curriculum is not gender mainstreamed because of limited knowledge and expertise, bureaucracy in curriculum change, poor pedagogy and prevalent negative attitude to gender. For female staff, power relations symbolically construct and regulate their experiences of work. Exclusions, while covert, are attenuated by women's exposure to local and international networks and mentoring. There is a need to formulate, implement and evaluate gender equity policies to address gendered experiences of female staff at the university. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction and conceptual clarifications While the growth of African universities has been phenomenal since independence in the 1960s, scholars have argued that African higher education needs to expand more rapidly if the continent is to catch up with developed regions and also meet national goals and aspirations (Gravenir, 2005; Olukoshi & Zeleza, 2005). In addition, gender equity in education is increasingly prioritized as an indicator of development and global maturity as a result of global pressure emanating from international commitments such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1998 UNESCO World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty First Century: Vision and Action and the 2000 Dakar Forum Framework of Education for All (EFA). Nigeria, the site of this study, is a signatory to all these conventions. ⁎ Corresponding author. 0277-5395/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2006.10.006
With a population of 124 million, (the largest in Africa) Nigeria has 250 ethnic groups (UNDP, 2003a,b). The male–female mix is equal, with approximately 60 million women, but the gender disparities in education, access to social services and political participation are high. Approximately 70% of the total population reside in rural areas and 30% in overpopulated urban areas. Nigeria was under military rule for close to 30 out of its 44 years of independence, but this ended in 1999 with the election of a democratic government. The Human Development Index is 0.453 making it 158th out of 177 countries (UNDP, 2005) while the Human Poverty Index is 38.8%, ranking 75th out of 103 developing countries. This is an anomaly in view of its vast forest and mineral resources, including petroleum for which Nigeria is one of the leading world exporters. A deliberate policy of widening access to higher education was adopted in the 1980s to ensure poverty reduction and inclusiveness, especially for those from ‘educationally less developed states (ELDS)’ who had
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been excluded by virtue of their geographical location, late access to western education and religious and cultural beliefs. Over a twenty-year period, 1975 to 1996, student enrolment expanded rapidly doubling every 4 to 5 years in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and standing at 900,000 by 2003 (Jibril, 2003:492). However, there is still considerable gender disparity in higher education with under 40% of women represented at this level, a feature which is even more pronounced in science and technology disciplines (Jibril, 2003:492). Female participation in higher education exists in a cultural context that is still generally unreceptive to female education as is evident from statistics of female enrolment, completion rates, and participation in the sciences and technology (GECHE, 2004). The lack of progressive policies and strategies to promote gender equity in higher education demonstrates that gender issues are not a priority at national and institutional levels. Rather, the initiatives to address gender disparity have been concentrated at lower levels of education and restricted to government and civil society. There are no affirmative action interventions for women's admission into higher educational institutions (although initiatives exist at a lower level in federal government secondary schools), nor bridging programmes nor female targeted scholarships as in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. The inference from the official position is that there are deep seated and volatile cleavages within the country such as ethnicity, minority issues, religion, educational disadvantage which need to be more urgently addressed than gender. Within higher education institutions, there are competing claims for funding to deal with attracting and retaining high quality staff in the face of acute brain drain (Jibril, 2003), equipping libraries and laboratories, providing ICT facilities and managing problems of highly restive and antagonistic staff and student unions (Yaqub, 2003). In summary, the characteristic features of university education in Nigeria have been the unplanned proliferation of higher education institutions since the 1980s, leading to a dramatic increase in student numbers but grossly inadequate funding and facilities for teaching, research and accommodation. Gender based violence also makes full participation in academic life for female students a significant problem (AAPS, 1994). This analysis is part of a larger study of gender equity in Commonwealth Higher Education covering five countries, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Sri Lanka (GECHE, 2005). It sought to assess the forms and functioning of various intervention policies and strategies in selected universities and the gendered
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experiences of stakeholders (re students, staff and policymakers) within those institutions. It focused on access, curriculum transformation and staff development in order to determine the enablers and inhibitors of progress towards gender equity. Gender equity and education: A conceptual framework A gender empowerment approach informs this study since it recognises distinctions between females and males in political, economic and other cultural contexts and advocates structural transformation especially through higher education to attain gender equity (Adedeora, 2002). It draws on post-modernist and post-colonial feminism which recognize and respect diversity and pluralism as a function of women's experiences. According to Flax (1990, p.41), “post modern discourses are deconstructive in that they make us sceptical about beliefs concerning truth, knowledge, power, the self and language that are taken for granted and serve as legitimation for contemporary Western culture”. Thus, feminism is not a universal notion, but one that is historically contextualized and able to account for cultural diversities and differences between women (Grimshaw, 1986) and interrogates essentialism. While women's oppression is a universal experience, interpretations and types of oppression vary from one economic, political and cultural location to another. Feminist scholars have illustrated how post colonial contexts shape women's lived experiences and reflect the complex dimensions of feminism (Harding & Narayan, 1998a,b; Mohanty & Alexander, 1997; Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, 1991). Post-colonialist theory holds that colonialism to some extent, reinforced patriarchy through an erosion of pre-colonial institutions that gave women political and economic control such as the Iyalode (Head of women) system among the Yorubas of Western Nigeria (Awe, 1977) and the umuada, “daughters of the house” among the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria (Okonjo, 1985). Iyalode and umuada were traditional political institutions which provided a gendered division of power. Under these institutional systems women took executive, legislative and judicial action in matters concerning women. Post-modernist and post-colonial theories help us understand the prevailing ambivalence of Nigerian society towards higher education for women. For while Nigerian society recognises that higher education is the surest way to attain social mobility, it is also wary about further education's de-traditionalising effect on female staff and students. Morley's writing (1999) on the micropolitics of organisations also provides a useful analytical framework for explaining women's experience of the
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hidden curriculum, the hidden, subterranean ways in which power is relayed in everyday practices within institutions. Gender equity and education: The Nigerian context Higher education for girls in Nigeria has to be viewed within various contexts, one being the government sponsored post-Beijing Women in Development (WID) programmes such as ‘The Better Life for Rural Women’ and ‘The Family Economic Advancement Programme’ which were established by wives of two military heads of state in the 1980s and 1990s, ostensibly to ameliorate the conditions of women and girls, but which were largely used to strengthen these spouses' power base (Mama, 1996). While discussion on gender equity was accepted virtually only within those spaces in the military era, the issue of women in higher education was largely restricted to debates about regulating female undergraduates' behaviour and the ‘antidote’ – establishing women – only universities (Mama, 1996). The other context is the corporatization of education, the emphasis on privatization of higher education and the demand by government that Nigerian universities meet shortfalls in their funding by mounting marketable courses and cost-effectiveness measures (National Universities Commission, 2005). Other issues that have impacted on higher education, particularly on the experiences of staff and students are globalization and poststructural adjustment programmes, which through devaluation of the local currency and reducing the quantum of funds available for higher education resulted in depletion of African intellectual capacity through brain drain, low staff morale and concentration of staff on finding other survival strategies (Mama, 2003a). Poverty, religious fundamentalism and gender-based violence also came into play (Mama, 2003b). Main hypotheses and research questions The main thesis that drove the larger GECHE research project is that formal policies for interventions for gender equity in higher education institutions (HEIs) are facilitated or impeded by organizational structures, informal practices and gendered power relations. Hence, challenging gender inequalities requires multifaceted strategies and the sustainability of such interventions depends on the partnership among all stakeholders — policy makers, the higher institution authorities and the civil society (GECHE, 2005). The specific objectives of the study in Nigeria were to: evaluate the enabling and obstructing factors to
female students' entry into the Faculty of Technology; assess the gender sensitivity of recruitment, staff training and promotion practices among academic and non academic staff of all cadres (i.e. academic, senior and junior staff. These are the categories established in the Nigerian university system); analyse the institutional culture and the curricula of departments in the Faculty of Agriculture. The research site was the University of Ibadan, the first university in Nigeria, established in 1948 as a College of the University of London. At that time, it was an elite institution whose main objective was to train, for the new nation of Nigeria, a small corps of highly qualified people who would serve in the colonial administration. It admitted 104 students, three of them women. Currently it has one College of Medicine, 14 faculties, 8 centres including the Institute of African Studies, which houses the Women's Research and Documentation Centre (WORDOC), probably the oldest Women's Research Centre in Nigeria, and 100 teaching departments. The university has 20,574 students, 1332 academic staff, 1713 senior administrative and technical staff, and 2970 junior staff (University of Ibadan, 2004). Student enrolment in the 2002/ 2003 session shows that 42% of undergraduates and 39% of postgraduate students were female, giving a total percentage of 39% representation of women (at sub-degree, undergraduate and post-graduate levels). This is higher than the national percentage of 35% (Jibril, 2003:492). The staff profile shows that for the same year, 13% of all professors and associate professors, 25% of senior lecturers, 28% of lecturers and 40% of assistant lecturers were female (University of Ibadan Office of Planning Statistics, 2004). Thus, there is a preponderance of females at the lowest level of the academic ladder that resembles general international trends in universities (Singh, 2002). The pattern of male dominance 75% to 25% female is also evident in the non-teaching staff category, except in the traditionally ‘female’ discipline of secretarial work. The University's Act (1962) and the more recent vision document do not refer specifically to gender, but it has, like most Nigerian university regulatory documents, an omnibus clause prohibiting discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, religion and sex. Target groups and methodology for the study Case study research methodology was adopted for all the 5 countries where the GECHE research was conducted and involved data collection via documentary analysis of national and institutional documents, semistructured interviews and observation of classes and
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meetings. The lead researcher, a senior academic in the university, two co-researchers from a sister research institute and a team of research assistants–lecturers and graduate students–conducted the interviews and observations. The team was aware of the ethics of researching one's own institution and the power relations involved. The possible negative effects were attenuated by the fact that the two co-researchers were not staff of the university and the lead researcher did not interview students although her position facilitated access and cooperation of staff and students. The interviewing process was facilitated by the interviewees' general perception that the project could lead to policy changes which might favour females, the wide publicity the project enjoyed through the University management's support for it and the periodic dissemination meetings. Issues relating to female access were investigated in the Faculty of Technology by interviewing and observing 10 female second year students, who could best recall their experiences with university admission, and by interviewing 6 male and female staff, and 4 policy makers/legislators within and outside the university. The rationale for choosing the Faculty of Technology was the perceived difficulty of access of females to this field since, for example, in the 2000/2001 session only 11.2% of the 1809 students enrolled were female (University of Ibadan, 2002). For curriculum transformation, 11 female third year students and 8 female and male academic staff in the Faculty of Agriculture were interviewed to assess their perception of the few gender courses in their faculty and the impact on their professional and personal development. The examination of staff development involved 19 academic, administrative and technical/junior staff, purposely selected for their perception of the gender sensitivity of the university's organizational culture as could be seen in recruitment, promotion practices, staff training and provision of facilities to assist female staff. Research findings We found that the responses on access, curriculum transformation and staff development could be described by adopting the terminologies used by Currie et al. in their study of American and Australian universities (2002:41), that is ‘structural, historical and denial.’ In their analysis structural responses concentrated on the patriarchal nature of the institutions and the male culture in which women worked. Historical responses suggested that the male and female imbalance was due to past
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situations that were discriminatory or to a previous lack of qualified women (pipeline effect). Denial responses were characterized by the suggestion that there was no difference in the treatment of male and female staff. Structural was used in our own analysis to cover responses which not only dealt with the patriarchal nature of the institution and the male culture in which women worked, but also within the larger society, historical attributed male female imbalance and masculinist assumptions to past discriminations or previous lack of qualified women and denial referred to assertions that there was no difference in the treatment of men and women. Access to technology The most common response to perceived imbalance in female access to the Faculty of Technology was structural. “It's a man's world” recurred in the interviews and it could also be inferred from the classroom observations where male students tended to dominate classroom interactions. Though the student respondents claimed that there were generally no inhibiting factors from the family background and largely no resistance to the choice of this non-traditional course, in a few cases, girls had been cautioned about the ‘difficulties’ in the study of technology and the need to be “tough” to tackle it. The internalization of this cultural belief in boys' superior physical and social skills by girls who are otherwise not traditional in choice of disciplines raises questions of the synchronicity of personal and professional roles. A female student said: You are supposed to be a weaker vessel and you have stronger people to contend with and you are expected to do the same thing and do it very well. They (boys) cope better because there are things they do which you cannot do like studying hard through the night. The masculinist culture of the institution and insecurity of the social environment which is manifested in cultism, sexual violence, sexual harassment, was seen as restricting access to and full participation in the life of the university. One student said: As a female you can't even stay out late to study. So they have an advantage over you there. Fear of cultism or gangsterism is not uncommon in Nigerian universities (Aina & Odebiyi, 2002) and, according to Morley et al. (2006) sexual harassment and sexual violence are ubiquitous areas of gender power. Abuse appears to be one of the many prices that women
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are expected to pay for entering traditional male reserve spaces. Some of the young women in this study said: We keep to ourselves because we don't want to draw attention to ourselves. The boys are freer with the lecturers who are mostly males. They interact with them after class. Unlike boys, we have to be careful with male lecturers because of the threat of sexual harassment. They (boys) bunch up together, study together and share information. Respondents also said violence is a cause of concern to parents sending their children to public universities. However, evidence of victim blaming among male and female academic staff, policy makers and students for sexual harassment of girls (for “provocative dressing”) corroborates the position in other studies about the existence of transactional sex in which it is deemed that girls trade themselves for marks (Panos Institute, 2003). This attribution of perceived fault to individuals rather than the system makes attitudinal change and institutional transformation difficult. Although the university had taken steps to redress some of these impediments, there was widespread scepticism about the effectiveness of existing university structures such as the University's Truth Commission, an alternative redress mechanism for staff and students. The responses imply that in a male-dominated system, you cannot expect social justice with respect to female interests. In a remarkable indictment of the system, one female student asked rhetorically: Who is in the Truth Commission? Is it not the men? They are probably all related (friends)! Even though official recognition of the existence of sexual harassment is evident in the 1989 Ministry of Education Circular on Sexual Harassment in Educational Institutions, there has been little institutional will in most Nigerian universities to set up the machineries for dealing with it. Another feature of the hidden curriculum is the gendering of classroom participation. Male dominance in the classroom is seen as a reason for the disempowerment of girls and their silencing (Lewis, 1994). The girls' strategy was to occupy as little space and visibility as possible but prove themselves in written work or when they were directly required to answer questions. The behaviour contrasts however with that of the girls in the Faculty of Agriculture where the number was larger and they felt more empowered to participate in class.
Historical reasons also accounted in a large measure for both enablers and inhibitors to access. The interviews confirmed the findings of the policy review that limited initiatives to encourage the access or retention of girls in university education existed. For example, at the lower levels of education, girls had not been encouraged to study sciences (GECHE, 2004), since there were still essentialist notions even at the national educational policy level and among respondents, of what were “ proper” male and female careers, that is, those more suited to women's supposedly nurturing roles. One male policy maker provides the rationale behind “concessions” made to females in admissions: What we do, we encourage areas that are more inclined to women, for instance, nursing, medicine, education. But Technology, No (why) because as I see it as an increasingly male dominated area. All universities are advised to give more room (for girls). By that I mean admission to the female students and we monitor it strictly. … any university that gives at least 37per cent sometimes 47per cent admission places for ladies will be highly commended, but it is not as if we give them money for that. Parents' higher education attainment, especially mothers' education as well as experiences of other siblings and members of the extended family who had graduated from universities appeared to be a catalyst for female graduates' interest in higher education. Family background also created the enabling environment where the girls in the sample see education as a right and higher education (university) as the norm. One Technology student claimed: In my family, university education is a must. It's just natural. This is in line with Mama's (1996) position that female academics tend to come from western educated, middle class backgrounds. Thus gender intersects with other structures of inequality such as socio economic background. Private or elite public secondary school education (such as Federal Government Colleges) served as an enabler to girls in allowing them to have sound science education and avoiding stereotyping of girls as fit only for the Humanities. A male academic said: …girls from good schools, e.g. Queens College etc. are generally found in Engineering.
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The gender agenda of international agencies and organizations, such as Gender and Science and Technology and Third World Organization of Women in Science and local women's professional associations, for example, Computer Association of Nigeria, has helped raise awareness and ensure discursive space at local levels. Affirmative action (AA) which countries like Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa have adopted as an intervention to achieve equity does not exist at national or institutional levels of higher education in Nigeria. The general ambivalence to AA is reflected in the aversion of male and female interviewees to the possibility of its introduction, seeing AA as being opposed to merit and being counterproductive as it might result in backlash against apparent undue advantage being given to girls. A female academic also said: I've always been against giving females a lower cutoff, for example, or lower requirement, because to my mind, females don't need a lower, erm, set of qualifications. They can compete. In summary, access to technology disciplines is constrained by societal beliefs, girls' history of disadvantage in science education and campus violence and a male dominated institutional culture. Access is enabled by parental levels of higher education, better quality schools which do not stereotype girls, opportunities for good jobs and gender driven initiatives. Curriculum transformation in the Faculty of Agriculture It has long been acknowledged that the curriculum is a major relay of dominant power relations in any society since what gets taught and what gets excluded are directly linked to hegemonies (Morley et al., 2006). The history of women's studies and gender studies movements have attempted to illustrate how gender is frequently a disqualified discourse in mainstream academic disciplines and early feminist interventions have been developed in gender mainstreaming (UNESCO, 2002) which addresses the “hidden curriculum”, the often unspoken but nevertheless important messages which are transmitted within the higher education establishment. Even though there are five existing centres of Women's and Gender Studies in Nigerian universities, these do not appear to have made an impact on gender mainstreaming. In the case study university's Faculty of Agriculture it was perceived as being at rudimentary stages except in Agriculture Extension which has specific courses that deal with stereotypically feminine issues, home econom-
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ics/management. Knowledge of gender awareness among some of the lecturers was very poor or at best limited to the Women in Development paradigm canvassed1 in state sponsored feminism in organizations like the Better Life for Rural Women and essentialist notions of female participation in Agriculture. One female academic asked: If I may ask, what is gender sensitivity? Because I know that the course is meant for both male and female. It is not for a particular sex, and another one male lecturer argued: There are many areas where women are better because they disseminate information, that's the major thing they do. And when we research into any area of agriculture and come out with a new way of doing something, and we now want to disseminate it, we have found out that ladies do it better. They are like sales people. The question of disqualified knowledge (Spivak, 1999; Stanley, 1997) crops up with reference to gender studies as male colleagues tend to discount it as being tangential to the discipline. Disqualified knowledge refers to those disciplines or aspects of disciplines not endorsed by the mainstream ‘malestreamed’ producers of knowledge as being legitimate, respectable areas of intellectual work. The general lack of grounding in concepts of gender and women's studies (Pereira, 1997) served as an inhibitor to acceptance of a gender lens and made it difficult for gendersensitive lecturers to influence the university curriculum appreciably. Reasons deduced for low gender sensitivity in the agriculture curriculum were largely practical. For example, the bureaucratic functioning of the university's curriculum committee which, while ensuring that “standards are maintained sometimes slows our response to rather crucial, emerging manpower needs” (Female academic interviewee.) Funding constraints and inadequate teaching resources restricted opportunities for equipment and field work and brought about low impetus for innovation in teaching techniques since this did not advance lecturers' promotion prospects. Students themselves had little enthusiasm for the discipline since it was not their subject of choice for university education. While students preferred participatory techniques and life application skills, the pedagogy of agriculture courses followed the transmission pedagogy of “mainstream” disciplinary areas, and classroom
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observations showed minimal references to female scholars and affirmation of their knowledge, thus discounting women's interests, experiences and scholarship (Mama, 1996). Staff development The interviews on staff development exhibited characteristics of structural, historical and denial responses. There was a lot of emphasis on the cultural barriers to women's advancement especially their multiple roles of reproduction and production. Most respondents thought that the burden of family care affects women's productivity and advancement in the work place. This was true of academic staff who quantified the delay to their careers as a consequence of motherhood. Family responsibilities prevented many from publishing, attending conferences, training courses, postgraduate programmes and were often used as an excuse for not offering them opportunities to access staff training programmes. One female academic staff said: Many of my colleagues who were assistant lecturers like myself have not moved like I have. I probably had more time to publish because I had a small family. The choice of specialization with less constraining time demands was a strategy used for coping by females in the medical field. Normative values and expectations about women's roles resound in this study, even among female academics, some of whom expressed the need to balance their progress with that of their husbands. One female academic stated: Another consideration is that in this society, you don't aspire to get to any level where the husband has not already made his mark. So psychologically, that also had a delay effect, since my husband is also in academics and pursuing the same kind of advancement. Many of the respondents did not report having suffered from negative effects of discrimination in appointment or promotion since they stated that the guidelines were clear but this could be a form of denial since some also complained about promotion based on “inexplicit criteria” and noted that for managerial and elective offices, other intangible, unnamed forces were at work obstructing their advancement to leadership positions. More overt forms of discrimination based on the inevitability of reproductive roles could occur such as at recruitment and raises the
question of transparency in decision making. One academic staff member reported: It was at the interview. In fact before we went for the interview our director had been saying that he didn't want to take a woman. He said “I cannot take a woman because she will go on maternity leave.” The phenomenon of women experiencing exclusion confirms findings from studies in other countries like Finland where Husu (2001) reports a study that suggests that after finishing their doctorates, academic women in universities fall into a black hole. Kolodny (1998) also reports a similar pattern in Australia and the United States where women are still cluttered in the untenured ranks and continue to hit the proverbial glass ceiling at two crucial points, the initial promotion and tenure review. One enabler to women's advancement is international links and visibility at the global level which vitiates their restriction to the traditional domestic sphere. The female academic staff in our sample recognized and utilized international networks, exchanges and attendance at conferences, seminars and sabbaticals to enhance their career advancement. One academic commented: Some conferences that you go to, you may not get a publication but you will get a lot of contacts and you will get a lot of information. It however constituted a source of tension with male heads. A female academic staff recounted her experience. When I was going for the X conference (a gender forum) … my Head of Department was against it. He was excited that I was travelling but when he got to know that it was on gender issue, he said “Absolutely no.” Foreign agencies were perceived as playing a catalytic role in pushing the gender equity agenda through special grants and scholarships and national compliance with some international conventions such as the CEDAW (UN Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women). Quasi-government organs often serve as facilitators of numerous seminars and workshops and some female staff reported a relatively prevalent opportunism in men's involvement in gender research since they “add a gender focus to their proposals in order to obtain grants.” In contrast, female academic staff in the science-oriented subjects showed little awareness of the gender dimensions of their disciplines. As one of them asserted: “Science has no gender.” Women's small number in the institution restricted their access to local important informal networks of contacts among lecturers, administrators, spouses, and friends who sometimes proved to be very important
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sources of information about employment and development opportunities. Mentoring which has been identified as providing support and guidance (August & Waltman, 2004), was viewed by respondents as being critical to their progress and growth of confidence. It played a significant role for some academic staff in identifying them for appointment as well as international networks. One of the respondents said: Prof. X is a very good mentor for many of us… She provided the support group… the way senior colleagues carry themselves, support other people is very important. and one attributed her slow progress to lack of mentoring at crucial times in her career: I didn't get all that kind of mentoring … making sure your paper is published there, nobody told you such things; you find out when you need to submit your papers. Non teaching staff were less aware of the value of mentoring and in one case, suspicious of its usefulness in the Nigerian society since it could encourage nepotism. There were no formal gender sensitisation programmes and some seemed to be wary of gender issues because of the “demonisation” of terms like “feminism” and “women's lib”. A female student said “when you are tagged as a Women's Lib person they see you as way out, deviant.” The observations at academic and administrative meetings confirmed findings from other studies on women's disadvantage in power relations, especially predominant male dominance and female silence (Luke, 1998; Roberts, 1995). Space and time was gendered. Females sat clustered in less visible positions, except in the administrators' meetings where the top hierarchy was female. Male academic staff members, especially senior ones sat together and affirmed each other's position in words and non-verbal communication. There was a difference in men and women's facilitation styles, with females being more consultative and participatory and gender having a significant impact on academic and professional identity. In conclusion there is confirmation of GECHE's (2004) earlier observation of university management being seen as a terrain best suited to males owing to the volatile nature of staff and student activism (Odejide, 2003). Conclusions The study concluded that gender is not explicitly on the agenda of the university but university life is a highly gendered experience. Women's access to Faculty of
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Technology is still limited because of poor preparation at lower levels of education, male dominance of time and space, and societal expectations of appropriate careers for women. Affirmative action is not used and is viewed with fear of stigmatisation and backlash. The curriculum is not gender mainstreamed because of inadequate knowledge, limited expertise, bureaucracy and poor pedagogy and spill over of prevalent negative attitude to feminism. For female staff, power relations symbolically construct and regulate their experiences of work and home. Exclusions are covert but can be attenuated by exposure to local and international networks, mentoring and gender. In view of our findings, the development of equal opportunity clauses in the recruitment and promotion policies is recommended. There is the need to introduce, implement and monitor gender violence and sexual harassment polices. Gender sensitisation of staff and students and the provision of pastoral services and credible grievance procedures is required. Gender mainstreaming in all disciplines to ensure curriculum transformation and quality pedagogy is an important step towards achieving gender equality at the university. Affirmative action interventions in relation to female students, access to Technology and staff development of female academics is another important step. Policies and practical measures to ensure gender-friendly environment e.g. security on campuses through provision of adequate lighting and security will enhance women's experience of university life. Endnote 1 The word canvassed is used to describe the propagandist approach used in these state sponsored post-Beijing projects.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support for this study provided by DFID through the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. We also thank the management, staff and students of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and officials of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, the National Universities Commission and the House of Representatives. References Adedeora, Chi (2002). Beyond access for women: What does gender mean for universities? A Gender analysis; The Nigerian Universities System final Draft for the case studies of Nigerian Universities Project. African Association of Political Science (AAPS) (1994, September 1–5). Sexual harassment and violence. African Association of Political Science Newsletter. New Series, Vol. 16.
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Aina, Olabasi, & Odebiyi, Adetanwa (2002). Cultism and youth violence in Nigerian universities. Ile Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University Press. August, Louise, & Waltman, Jean (2004). Culture, climate and contribution: Career satisfaction among female faculty. Research in Higher Education, 45(2), 177−192. Awe, Bolanle (1977). The Iyalode in the traditional Yoruba political system. In Alice Schlegel (Ed.), Sexual stratification: A crosscultural view. New York: Columbia University Press. Currie, Jan, Thiele, Bev, & Harris, Patricia (2002). Gendered universities. In Jan Currie, Bev Thiele, & Patricia Harris (Eds.), Globalized economies: Power, careers and sacrifices (pp. 34−50). Lexington: Lexington Books. Flax, Jane (1990). Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis, feminism and postmodernism in the contemporary West. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gender Equity in Commonwealth Higher Education (GECHE) (2004). Working Paper 1: Setting the Scene: Retrieved from: www.ioe.ac. uk/efps/GenderEqComHE Gender Equity in Commonwealth Higher Education (2005). Working paper 5: Data analysis II: Available from: www.ioe.ac.uk/efps/ GenderEqComHE Gravenir, Frederick (2005). The expansion of university programmes and the under and over supply of skilled personnel in Kenya: An overview. In Paul Zeleza & Adebayo Olukoshi (Eds.), African universities in the twenty first century. Dakar: CODESRIA. Grimshaw, Jane (1986). Philosophy and feminist thinking. University of Minnesota Press. Harding, Sandra & Narayan, Uma (Eds.). (1998a). Border crossings: Multicultural and postcolonial feminist challenges to philosophy, Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Harding, Sandra, & Narayan, Uma (Eds.). (1998b). Border crossings: Multicultural and postcolonial feminist challenges to philosophy, Vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husu, Liisa (2001). Sexism, support and survival in academia: Academic women and hidden discrimination in Finland. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Jibril, Munzali (2003). Nigeria. In Damtew Teferra & Phillip Altbach (Eds.), African higher education: An international reference handbook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kolodny, Annette (1998). Failing the future: A dean looks at higher education in the twenty-first century. Duke University Press. Lewis, Magda (1994). Without a word: Teaching beyond women's silence. London: Routledge. Luke, Carmen (1998). Cultural politics and women in Singapore higher education management. Gender and Education, 10(3), 245−263. Mama, Amina (1996). Gender research and women's studies in Africa. In Amina Mama (Ed.), Setting an agenda for women's studies in Nigeria (pp. 19−30). Zaria: Tamaza Publishing Company. Mama, Amina (2003a). Restore, reform but do not transform: The gender politics of higher education in Africa. Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 1(1), 101−125. Mama, Amina (2003b). Intellectual politics. Feminist Africa, Vol. 1. Cape Town: University of Cape Town: Africa Gender Institute. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, & Alexander, Jacqui (Eds.). (1997). Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. New York: Routledge. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Russo, Ann, & Torres, Lourdes (Eds.). (1991). Third world women and the politics of feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Morley, Louise (1999). Organising feminisms: The micropolitics of the academy. London: Macmillan.
Morley, Louise, et al. (2006). Gender equity in selected commonwealth universities. Research report to the department for international development. London: DFID. National Universities Commission (2005, October). NUC newsletter. Abuja: National Universities Commission. Odejide, Abiola (2003, Fall). Navigating the seas: Women in higher education in Nigeria. Journal of Education, 38(3), 453−468. Okonjo, Kamene (1985). Women's political participation in Nigeria in Steady, Filomina. Black woman cross culturally. Rochester: Schankman, 79−160. Olukoshi, Adebayo, & Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe (2005). The African university in the twenty first century: Future challenges and a research agenda. In Paul Zeleza & Adebayo Olukoshi (Eds.), African universities in the twenty first century (pp. 595−617). Dakar: CODESRIA. Panos Institute (2003). Beyond victory and villains: Addressing sexual violence in the education sector. London: Panos Institute. Pereira, Charmaine (Ed.). (1997). Concepts and methods for gender and women's studies in NigeriaReport of the network for women's studies in Nigeria, Vol. 2. Zaria: Tamaza Publishing. Roberts, Julie (1995). Didn't I just say that? The gender dynamics of decision making. A research project on effective communication and decision making in committees funded by the affirmative action agency under the model directions program. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Singh, Jasbir (2002). Still a single sex profession? Female staff numbers in commonwealth universities. London: Association of Commonwealth Universities. Spivak, Gayatri (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason. London: Sage. Stanley, Liz (Ed.). (1997). Knowing feminisms. London: Sage. UNESCO (2002). UNESCO: Mainstreaming the needs of women. Paris: UNESCO. UNDP (2003a). World population prospects: The 2002 revision. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/html UNDP (2003b). Human development indicators 2003. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/html UNDP (2005). Country fact sheets: Nigeria Human Development Index-going beyond income. Retrieved February, 2006, from http:// www.undp.org/statistics/data/country_fact_sheets/city_fs_NGA. html University of Ibadan (2002). Management Information Office. Unpublished statistics. University of Ibadan (2004). Management Information Office. Unpublished statistics. University of Ibadan (2004). Planning Office Statistics. Yaqub, Nuhu (2003). Review of the 2000/2001 National Human Development Report. The Nigerian Social Scientist, 6(1), 41−48.
Further reading Awe, Bolanle, & Nina, Mba (1987). Women's research and documentation (Nigeria). SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(4), 859−864. Bennett, Jane (2002). Exploration of a “gap”: Strategising gender equity in African universities. Africa Gender Institute E-Journal Launch Issue. (Retrieved from http://www.feministafrica.org/01-2002/jane. html) Birke, Lynda (1986). Women, feminism and biology: The feminist challenge. Brighton Sussex: Harvester Press.
A. Odejide et al. / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 552–561 Federal Ministry of Education (1989). Sexual harassment and examination malpractice. Unpublished Report. Feldman, Saul (1994). Escape from death house: Women in graduate and professional school education. New York: Mc Grawhill. Gaidzanwa, Rudo (1997). Gender analysis in the field of education: A Zimbabwean example. In A. Imam, Amina Mama, & F. Sow (Eds.), Expanding African social sciences (pp. 271−295). Dakar: CODESRIA. Gaidzanwa, Rudo. (2000). Academic careers and women at the University of Zimbabwe. Paper presented at the Conference on Gender Equity, Democracy and Human Rights, University of Zimbabwe, July. Goldstein, Joshua (1999). International relations. New York: Longman. Imasogie, Mosunmola (2002). Sexual harassment and female students in Nigerian Universities — A case study of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria. Paper presented at Seminar at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, June 2002. Longe Report (1991). Higher education in Nigeria beyond: Report of the commission on the review of higher education in Nigeria Lagos. Federal Government Printer. Mikell, Gwendoline (1997). African feminism: The politics of survival in sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Morley, Louise (2003). Quality and power in higher education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Narayan, Uma, & Harding, Sandra (Eds.). (1998). Border-crossings: Multicultural and post colonial feminist challenges to philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Obanya, Pai (2003). Girls and women's education: A perspective on the challenges in Nigeria.” A keynote address presented at the roundtable on building momentum to eliminate gender gaps by 2005, Abuja, and April 2003. Odejide, Abiola (2001). Women in management in higher education in Nigeria: The role of academic women's groups. Paper presented at the Association of Commonwealth Universities and Institute of Education London seminar on managing gendered change in higher education in selected commonwealth Countries. Johannesburg, February 9–11, 2001. Okin, Susan M (1999). Justice, gender and family. New York: Basis Book. Seidler, Victor (1998). In R. Chapman & F. Rutherford (Eds.), Fathering authority and masculinity. London: Macmillan. UNESCO (2004). Education for All: The quality imperative. Global monitoring report 2005. Paris: UNESCO.
Does expansion mean inclusion in Nigerian higher education? Abiola Odejide a,⁎, Bola Akanji b , Kolade Odekunle b a
Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria b Nigeria Institute for Social and Economic Research Ibadan, Nigeria Available online 28 November 2006
Synopsis The expansion of higher education in Nigeria has been astronomical since 1948 when the first university, University of Ibadan (UI), was established. This article explores gender equity issues relating to access, curriculum transformation and staff development within the faculties of technology and agriculture at the University of Ibadan. It concludes that while gender is not explicitly on the university's agenda, university life is a highly gendered experience. Women's access to the Faculty of Technology is hampered by poor preparation at lower levels of education, male dominance of time and space and societal expectations of appropriate work for women. Affirmative action is perceived as discriminatory and counterproductive. The Agriculture curriculum is not gender mainstreamed because of limited knowledge and expertise, bureaucracy in curriculum change, poor pedagogy and prevalent negative attitude to gender. For female staff, power relations symbolically construct and regulate their experiences of work. Exclusions, while covert, are attenuated by women's exposure to local and international networks and mentoring. There is a need to formulate, implement and evaluate gender equity policies to address gendered experiences of female staff at the university. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction and conceptual clarifications While the growth of African universities has been phenomenal since independence in the 1960s, scholars have argued that African higher education needs to expand more rapidly if the continent is to catch up with developed regions and also meet national goals and aspirations (Gravenir, 2005; Olukoshi & Zeleza, 2005). In addition, gender equity in education is increasingly prioritized as an indicator of development and global maturity as a result of global pressure emanating from international commitments such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1998 UNESCO World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty First Century: Vision and Action and the 2000 Dakar Forum Framework of Education for All (EFA). Nigeria, the site of this study, is a signatory to all these conventions. ⁎ Corresponding author. 0277-5395/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2006.10.006
With a population of 124 million, (the largest in Africa) Nigeria has 250 ethnic groups (UNDP, 2003a,b). The male–female mix is equal, with approximately 60 million women, but the gender disparities in education, access to social services and political participation are high. Approximately 70% of the total population reside in rural areas and 30% in overpopulated urban areas. Nigeria was under military rule for close to 30 out of its 44 years of independence, but this ended in 1999 with the election of a democratic government. The Human Development Index is 0.453 making it 158th out of 177 countries (UNDP, 2005) while the Human Poverty Index is 38.8%, ranking 75th out of 103 developing countries. This is an anomaly in view of its vast forest and mineral resources, including petroleum for which Nigeria is one of the leading world exporters. A deliberate policy of widening access to higher education was adopted in the 1980s to ensure poverty reduction and inclusiveness, especially for those from ‘educationally less developed states (ELDS)’ who had
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been excluded by virtue of their geographical location, late access to western education and religious and cultural beliefs. Over a twenty-year period, 1975 to 1996, student enrolment expanded rapidly doubling every 4 to 5 years in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and standing at 900,000 by 2003 (Jibril, 2003:492). However, there is still considerable gender disparity in higher education with under 40% of women represented at this level, a feature which is even more pronounced in science and technology disciplines (Jibril, 2003:492). Female participation in higher education exists in a cultural context that is still generally unreceptive to female education as is evident from statistics of female enrolment, completion rates, and participation in the sciences and technology (GECHE, 2004). The lack of progressive policies and strategies to promote gender equity in higher education demonstrates that gender issues are not a priority at national and institutional levels. Rather, the initiatives to address gender disparity have been concentrated at lower levels of education and restricted to government and civil society. There are no affirmative action interventions for women's admission into higher educational institutions (although initiatives exist at a lower level in federal government secondary schools), nor bridging programmes nor female targeted scholarships as in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. The inference from the official position is that there are deep seated and volatile cleavages within the country such as ethnicity, minority issues, religion, educational disadvantage which need to be more urgently addressed than gender. Within higher education institutions, there are competing claims for funding to deal with attracting and retaining high quality staff in the face of acute brain drain (Jibril, 2003), equipping libraries and laboratories, providing ICT facilities and managing problems of highly restive and antagonistic staff and student unions (Yaqub, 2003). In summary, the characteristic features of university education in Nigeria have been the unplanned proliferation of higher education institutions since the 1980s, leading to a dramatic increase in student numbers but grossly inadequate funding and facilities for teaching, research and accommodation. Gender based violence also makes full participation in academic life for female students a significant problem (AAPS, 1994). This analysis is part of a larger study of gender equity in Commonwealth Higher Education covering five countries, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Sri Lanka (GECHE, 2005). It sought to assess the forms and functioning of various intervention policies and strategies in selected universities and the gendered
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experiences of stakeholders (re students, staff and policymakers) within those institutions. It focused on access, curriculum transformation and staff development in order to determine the enablers and inhibitors of progress towards gender equity. Gender equity and education: A conceptual framework A gender empowerment approach informs this study since it recognises distinctions between females and males in political, economic and other cultural contexts and advocates structural transformation especially through higher education to attain gender equity (Adedeora, 2002). It draws on post-modernist and post-colonial feminism which recognize and respect diversity and pluralism as a function of women's experiences. According to Flax (1990, p.41), “post modern discourses are deconstructive in that they make us sceptical about beliefs concerning truth, knowledge, power, the self and language that are taken for granted and serve as legitimation for contemporary Western culture”. Thus, feminism is not a universal notion, but one that is historically contextualized and able to account for cultural diversities and differences between women (Grimshaw, 1986) and interrogates essentialism. While women's oppression is a universal experience, interpretations and types of oppression vary from one economic, political and cultural location to another. Feminist scholars have illustrated how post colonial contexts shape women's lived experiences and reflect the complex dimensions of feminism (Harding & Narayan, 1998a,b; Mohanty & Alexander, 1997; Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, 1991). Post-colonialist theory holds that colonialism to some extent, reinforced patriarchy through an erosion of pre-colonial institutions that gave women political and economic control such as the Iyalode (Head of women) system among the Yorubas of Western Nigeria (Awe, 1977) and the umuada, “daughters of the house” among the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria (Okonjo, 1985). Iyalode and umuada were traditional political institutions which provided a gendered division of power. Under these institutional systems women took executive, legislative and judicial action in matters concerning women. Post-modernist and post-colonial theories help us understand the prevailing ambivalence of Nigerian society towards higher education for women. For while Nigerian society recognises that higher education is the surest way to attain social mobility, it is also wary about further education's de-traditionalising effect on female staff and students. Morley's writing (1999) on the micropolitics of organisations also provides a useful analytical framework for explaining women's experience of the
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hidden curriculum, the hidden, subterranean ways in which power is relayed in everyday practices within institutions. Gender equity and education: The Nigerian context Higher education for girls in Nigeria has to be viewed within various contexts, one being the government sponsored post-Beijing Women in Development (WID) programmes such as ‘The Better Life for Rural Women’ and ‘The Family Economic Advancement Programme’ which were established by wives of two military heads of state in the 1980s and 1990s, ostensibly to ameliorate the conditions of women and girls, but which were largely used to strengthen these spouses' power base (Mama, 1996). While discussion on gender equity was accepted virtually only within those spaces in the military era, the issue of women in higher education was largely restricted to debates about regulating female undergraduates' behaviour and the ‘antidote’ – establishing women – only universities (Mama, 1996). The other context is the corporatization of education, the emphasis on privatization of higher education and the demand by government that Nigerian universities meet shortfalls in their funding by mounting marketable courses and cost-effectiveness measures (National Universities Commission, 2005). Other issues that have impacted on higher education, particularly on the experiences of staff and students are globalization and poststructural adjustment programmes, which through devaluation of the local currency and reducing the quantum of funds available for higher education resulted in depletion of African intellectual capacity through brain drain, low staff morale and concentration of staff on finding other survival strategies (Mama, 2003a). Poverty, religious fundamentalism and gender-based violence also came into play (Mama, 2003b). Main hypotheses and research questions The main thesis that drove the larger GECHE research project is that formal policies for interventions for gender equity in higher education institutions (HEIs) are facilitated or impeded by organizational structures, informal practices and gendered power relations. Hence, challenging gender inequalities requires multifaceted strategies and the sustainability of such interventions depends on the partnership among all stakeholders — policy makers, the higher institution authorities and the civil society (GECHE, 2005). The specific objectives of the study in Nigeria were to: evaluate the enabling and obstructing factors to
female students' entry into the Faculty of Technology; assess the gender sensitivity of recruitment, staff training and promotion practices among academic and non academic staff of all cadres (i.e. academic, senior and junior staff. These are the categories established in the Nigerian university system); analyse the institutional culture and the curricula of departments in the Faculty of Agriculture. The research site was the University of Ibadan, the first university in Nigeria, established in 1948 as a College of the University of London. At that time, it was an elite institution whose main objective was to train, for the new nation of Nigeria, a small corps of highly qualified people who would serve in the colonial administration. It admitted 104 students, three of them women. Currently it has one College of Medicine, 14 faculties, 8 centres including the Institute of African Studies, which houses the Women's Research and Documentation Centre (WORDOC), probably the oldest Women's Research Centre in Nigeria, and 100 teaching departments. The university has 20,574 students, 1332 academic staff, 1713 senior administrative and technical staff, and 2970 junior staff (University of Ibadan, 2004). Student enrolment in the 2002/ 2003 session shows that 42% of undergraduates and 39% of postgraduate students were female, giving a total percentage of 39% representation of women (at sub-degree, undergraduate and post-graduate levels). This is higher than the national percentage of 35% (Jibril, 2003:492). The staff profile shows that for the same year, 13% of all professors and associate professors, 25% of senior lecturers, 28% of lecturers and 40% of assistant lecturers were female (University of Ibadan Office of Planning Statistics, 2004). Thus, there is a preponderance of females at the lowest level of the academic ladder that resembles general international trends in universities (Singh, 2002). The pattern of male dominance 75% to 25% female is also evident in the non-teaching staff category, except in the traditionally ‘female’ discipline of secretarial work. The University's Act (1962) and the more recent vision document do not refer specifically to gender, but it has, like most Nigerian university regulatory documents, an omnibus clause prohibiting discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, religion and sex. Target groups and methodology for the study Case study research methodology was adopted for all the 5 countries where the GECHE research was conducted and involved data collection via documentary analysis of national and institutional documents, semistructured interviews and observation of classes and
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meetings. The lead researcher, a senior academic in the university, two co-researchers from a sister research institute and a team of research assistants–lecturers and graduate students–conducted the interviews and observations. The team was aware of the ethics of researching one's own institution and the power relations involved. The possible negative effects were attenuated by the fact that the two co-researchers were not staff of the university and the lead researcher did not interview students although her position facilitated access and cooperation of staff and students. The interviewing process was facilitated by the interviewees' general perception that the project could lead to policy changes which might favour females, the wide publicity the project enjoyed through the University management's support for it and the periodic dissemination meetings. Issues relating to female access were investigated in the Faculty of Technology by interviewing and observing 10 female second year students, who could best recall their experiences with university admission, and by interviewing 6 male and female staff, and 4 policy makers/legislators within and outside the university. The rationale for choosing the Faculty of Technology was the perceived difficulty of access of females to this field since, for example, in the 2000/2001 session only 11.2% of the 1809 students enrolled were female (University of Ibadan, 2002). For curriculum transformation, 11 female third year students and 8 female and male academic staff in the Faculty of Agriculture were interviewed to assess their perception of the few gender courses in their faculty and the impact on their professional and personal development. The examination of staff development involved 19 academic, administrative and technical/junior staff, purposely selected for their perception of the gender sensitivity of the university's organizational culture as could be seen in recruitment, promotion practices, staff training and provision of facilities to assist female staff. Research findings We found that the responses on access, curriculum transformation and staff development could be described by adopting the terminologies used by Currie et al. in their study of American and Australian universities (2002:41), that is ‘structural, historical and denial.’ In their analysis structural responses concentrated on the patriarchal nature of the institutions and the male culture in which women worked. Historical responses suggested that the male and female imbalance was due to past
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situations that were discriminatory or to a previous lack of qualified women (pipeline effect). Denial responses were characterized by the suggestion that there was no difference in the treatment of male and female staff. Structural was used in our own analysis to cover responses which not only dealt with the patriarchal nature of the institution and the male culture in which women worked, but also within the larger society, historical attributed male female imbalance and masculinist assumptions to past discriminations or previous lack of qualified women and denial referred to assertions that there was no difference in the treatment of men and women. Access to technology The most common response to perceived imbalance in female access to the Faculty of Technology was structural. “It's a man's world” recurred in the interviews and it could also be inferred from the classroom observations where male students tended to dominate classroom interactions. Though the student respondents claimed that there were generally no inhibiting factors from the family background and largely no resistance to the choice of this non-traditional course, in a few cases, girls had been cautioned about the ‘difficulties’ in the study of technology and the need to be “tough” to tackle it. The internalization of this cultural belief in boys' superior physical and social skills by girls who are otherwise not traditional in choice of disciplines raises questions of the synchronicity of personal and professional roles. A female student said: You are supposed to be a weaker vessel and you have stronger people to contend with and you are expected to do the same thing and do it very well. They (boys) cope better because there are things they do which you cannot do like studying hard through the night. The masculinist culture of the institution and insecurity of the social environment which is manifested in cultism, sexual violence, sexual harassment, was seen as restricting access to and full participation in the life of the university. One student said: As a female you can't even stay out late to study. So they have an advantage over you there. Fear of cultism or gangsterism is not uncommon in Nigerian universities (Aina & Odebiyi, 2002) and, according to Morley et al. (2006) sexual harassment and sexual violence are ubiquitous areas of gender power. Abuse appears to be one of the many prices that women
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are expected to pay for entering traditional male reserve spaces. Some of the young women in this study said: We keep to ourselves because we don't want to draw attention to ourselves. The boys are freer with the lecturers who are mostly males. They interact with them after class. Unlike boys, we have to be careful with male lecturers because of the threat of sexual harassment. They (boys) bunch up together, study together and share information. Respondents also said violence is a cause of concern to parents sending their children to public universities. However, evidence of victim blaming among male and female academic staff, policy makers and students for sexual harassment of girls (for “provocative dressing”) corroborates the position in other studies about the existence of transactional sex in which it is deemed that girls trade themselves for marks (Panos Institute, 2003). This attribution of perceived fault to individuals rather than the system makes attitudinal change and institutional transformation difficult. Although the university had taken steps to redress some of these impediments, there was widespread scepticism about the effectiveness of existing university structures such as the University's Truth Commission, an alternative redress mechanism for staff and students. The responses imply that in a male-dominated system, you cannot expect social justice with respect to female interests. In a remarkable indictment of the system, one female student asked rhetorically: Who is in the Truth Commission? Is it not the men? They are probably all related (friends)! Even though official recognition of the existence of sexual harassment is evident in the 1989 Ministry of Education Circular on Sexual Harassment in Educational Institutions, there has been little institutional will in most Nigerian universities to set up the machineries for dealing with it. Another feature of the hidden curriculum is the gendering of classroom participation. Male dominance in the classroom is seen as a reason for the disempowerment of girls and their silencing (Lewis, 1994). The girls' strategy was to occupy as little space and visibility as possible but prove themselves in written work or when they were directly required to answer questions. The behaviour contrasts however with that of the girls in the Faculty of Agriculture where the number was larger and they felt more empowered to participate in class.
Historical reasons also accounted in a large measure for both enablers and inhibitors to access. The interviews confirmed the findings of the policy review that limited initiatives to encourage the access or retention of girls in university education existed. For example, at the lower levels of education, girls had not been encouraged to study sciences (GECHE, 2004), since there were still essentialist notions even at the national educational policy level and among respondents, of what were “ proper” male and female careers, that is, those more suited to women's supposedly nurturing roles. One male policy maker provides the rationale behind “concessions” made to females in admissions: What we do, we encourage areas that are more inclined to women, for instance, nursing, medicine, education. But Technology, No (why) because as I see it as an increasingly male dominated area. All universities are advised to give more room (for girls). By that I mean admission to the female students and we monitor it strictly. … any university that gives at least 37per cent sometimes 47per cent admission places for ladies will be highly commended, but it is not as if we give them money for that. Parents' higher education attainment, especially mothers' education as well as experiences of other siblings and members of the extended family who had graduated from universities appeared to be a catalyst for female graduates' interest in higher education. Family background also created the enabling environment where the girls in the sample see education as a right and higher education (university) as the norm. One Technology student claimed: In my family, university education is a must. It's just natural. This is in line with Mama's (1996) position that female academics tend to come from western educated, middle class backgrounds. Thus gender intersects with other structures of inequality such as socio economic background. Private or elite public secondary school education (such as Federal Government Colleges) served as an enabler to girls in allowing them to have sound science education and avoiding stereotyping of girls as fit only for the Humanities. A male academic said: …girls from good schools, e.g. Queens College etc. are generally found in Engineering.
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The gender agenda of international agencies and organizations, such as Gender and Science and Technology and Third World Organization of Women in Science and local women's professional associations, for example, Computer Association of Nigeria, has helped raise awareness and ensure discursive space at local levels. Affirmative action (AA) which countries like Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa have adopted as an intervention to achieve equity does not exist at national or institutional levels of higher education in Nigeria. The general ambivalence to AA is reflected in the aversion of male and female interviewees to the possibility of its introduction, seeing AA as being opposed to merit and being counterproductive as it might result in backlash against apparent undue advantage being given to girls. A female academic also said: I've always been against giving females a lower cutoff, for example, or lower requirement, because to my mind, females don't need a lower, erm, set of qualifications. They can compete. In summary, access to technology disciplines is constrained by societal beliefs, girls' history of disadvantage in science education and campus violence and a male dominated institutional culture. Access is enabled by parental levels of higher education, better quality schools which do not stereotype girls, opportunities for good jobs and gender driven initiatives. Curriculum transformation in the Faculty of Agriculture It has long been acknowledged that the curriculum is a major relay of dominant power relations in any society since what gets taught and what gets excluded are directly linked to hegemonies (Morley et al., 2006). The history of women's studies and gender studies movements have attempted to illustrate how gender is frequently a disqualified discourse in mainstream academic disciplines and early feminist interventions have been developed in gender mainstreaming (UNESCO, 2002) which addresses the “hidden curriculum”, the often unspoken but nevertheless important messages which are transmitted within the higher education establishment. Even though there are five existing centres of Women's and Gender Studies in Nigerian universities, these do not appear to have made an impact on gender mainstreaming. In the case study university's Faculty of Agriculture it was perceived as being at rudimentary stages except in Agriculture Extension which has specific courses that deal with stereotypically feminine issues, home econom-
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ics/management. Knowledge of gender awareness among some of the lecturers was very poor or at best limited to the Women in Development paradigm canvassed1 in state sponsored feminism in organizations like the Better Life for Rural Women and essentialist notions of female participation in Agriculture. One female academic asked: If I may ask, what is gender sensitivity? Because I know that the course is meant for both male and female. It is not for a particular sex, and another one male lecturer argued: There are many areas where women are better because they disseminate information, that's the major thing they do. And when we research into any area of agriculture and come out with a new way of doing something, and we now want to disseminate it, we have found out that ladies do it better. They are like sales people. The question of disqualified knowledge (Spivak, 1999; Stanley, 1997) crops up with reference to gender studies as male colleagues tend to discount it as being tangential to the discipline. Disqualified knowledge refers to those disciplines or aspects of disciplines not endorsed by the mainstream ‘malestreamed’ producers of knowledge as being legitimate, respectable areas of intellectual work. The general lack of grounding in concepts of gender and women's studies (Pereira, 1997) served as an inhibitor to acceptance of a gender lens and made it difficult for gendersensitive lecturers to influence the university curriculum appreciably. Reasons deduced for low gender sensitivity in the agriculture curriculum were largely practical. For example, the bureaucratic functioning of the university's curriculum committee which, while ensuring that “standards are maintained sometimes slows our response to rather crucial, emerging manpower needs” (Female academic interviewee.) Funding constraints and inadequate teaching resources restricted opportunities for equipment and field work and brought about low impetus for innovation in teaching techniques since this did not advance lecturers' promotion prospects. Students themselves had little enthusiasm for the discipline since it was not their subject of choice for university education. While students preferred participatory techniques and life application skills, the pedagogy of agriculture courses followed the transmission pedagogy of “mainstream” disciplinary areas, and classroom
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observations showed minimal references to female scholars and affirmation of their knowledge, thus discounting women's interests, experiences and scholarship (Mama, 1996). Staff development The interviews on staff development exhibited characteristics of structural, historical and denial responses. There was a lot of emphasis on the cultural barriers to women's advancement especially their multiple roles of reproduction and production. Most respondents thought that the burden of family care affects women's productivity and advancement in the work place. This was true of academic staff who quantified the delay to their careers as a consequence of motherhood. Family responsibilities prevented many from publishing, attending conferences, training courses, postgraduate programmes and were often used as an excuse for not offering them opportunities to access staff training programmes. One female academic staff said: Many of my colleagues who were assistant lecturers like myself have not moved like I have. I probably had more time to publish because I had a small family. The choice of specialization with less constraining time demands was a strategy used for coping by females in the medical field. Normative values and expectations about women's roles resound in this study, even among female academics, some of whom expressed the need to balance their progress with that of their husbands. One female academic stated: Another consideration is that in this society, you don't aspire to get to any level where the husband has not already made his mark. So psychologically, that also had a delay effect, since my husband is also in academics and pursuing the same kind of advancement. Many of the respondents did not report having suffered from negative effects of discrimination in appointment or promotion since they stated that the guidelines were clear but this could be a form of denial since some also complained about promotion based on “inexplicit criteria” and noted that for managerial and elective offices, other intangible, unnamed forces were at work obstructing their advancement to leadership positions. More overt forms of discrimination based on the inevitability of reproductive roles could occur such as at recruitment and raises the
question of transparency in decision making. One academic staff member reported: It was at the interview. In fact before we went for the interview our director had been saying that he didn't want to take a woman. He said “I cannot take a woman because she will go on maternity leave.” The phenomenon of women experiencing exclusion confirms findings from studies in other countries like Finland where Husu (2001) reports a study that suggests that after finishing their doctorates, academic women in universities fall into a black hole. Kolodny (1998) also reports a similar pattern in Australia and the United States where women are still cluttered in the untenured ranks and continue to hit the proverbial glass ceiling at two crucial points, the initial promotion and tenure review. One enabler to women's advancement is international links and visibility at the global level which vitiates their restriction to the traditional domestic sphere. The female academic staff in our sample recognized and utilized international networks, exchanges and attendance at conferences, seminars and sabbaticals to enhance their career advancement. One academic commented: Some conferences that you go to, you may not get a publication but you will get a lot of contacts and you will get a lot of information. It however constituted a source of tension with male heads. A female academic staff recounted her experience. When I was going for the X conference (a gender forum) … my Head of Department was against it. He was excited that I was travelling but when he got to know that it was on gender issue, he said “Absolutely no.” Foreign agencies were perceived as playing a catalytic role in pushing the gender equity agenda through special grants and scholarships and national compliance with some international conventions such as the CEDAW (UN Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women). Quasi-government organs often serve as facilitators of numerous seminars and workshops and some female staff reported a relatively prevalent opportunism in men's involvement in gender research since they “add a gender focus to their proposals in order to obtain grants.” In contrast, female academic staff in the science-oriented subjects showed little awareness of the gender dimensions of their disciplines. As one of them asserted: “Science has no gender.” Women's small number in the institution restricted their access to local important informal networks of contacts among lecturers, administrators, spouses, and friends who sometimes proved to be very important
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sources of information about employment and development opportunities. Mentoring which has been identified as providing support and guidance (August & Waltman, 2004), was viewed by respondents as being critical to their progress and growth of confidence. It played a significant role for some academic staff in identifying them for appointment as well as international networks. One of the respondents said: Prof. X is a very good mentor for many of us… She provided the support group… the way senior colleagues carry themselves, support other people is very important. and one attributed her slow progress to lack of mentoring at crucial times in her career: I didn't get all that kind of mentoring … making sure your paper is published there, nobody told you such things; you find out when you need to submit your papers. Non teaching staff were less aware of the value of mentoring and in one case, suspicious of its usefulness in the Nigerian society since it could encourage nepotism. There were no formal gender sensitisation programmes and some seemed to be wary of gender issues because of the “demonisation” of terms like “feminism” and “women's lib”. A female student said “when you are tagged as a Women's Lib person they see you as way out, deviant.” The observations at academic and administrative meetings confirmed findings from other studies on women's disadvantage in power relations, especially predominant male dominance and female silence (Luke, 1998; Roberts, 1995). Space and time was gendered. Females sat clustered in less visible positions, except in the administrators' meetings where the top hierarchy was female. Male academic staff members, especially senior ones sat together and affirmed each other's position in words and non-verbal communication. There was a difference in men and women's facilitation styles, with females being more consultative and participatory and gender having a significant impact on academic and professional identity. In conclusion there is confirmation of GECHE's (2004) earlier observation of university management being seen as a terrain best suited to males owing to the volatile nature of staff and student activism (Odejide, 2003). Conclusions The study concluded that gender is not explicitly on the agenda of the university but university life is a highly gendered experience. Women's access to Faculty of
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Technology is still limited because of poor preparation at lower levels of education, male dominance of time and space, and societal expectations of appropriate careers for women. Affirmative action is not used and is viewed with fear of stigmatisation and backlash. The curriculum is not gender mainstreamed because of inadequate knowledge, limited expertise, bureaucracy and poor pedagogy and spill over of prevalent negative attitude to feminism. For female staff, power relations symbolically construct and regulate their experiences of work and home. Exclusions are covert but can be attenuated by exposure to local and international networks, mentoring and gender. In view of our findings, the development of equal opportunity clauses in the recruitment and promotion policies is recommended. There is the need to introduce, implement and monitor gender violence and sexual harassment polices. Gender sensitisation of staff and students and the provision of pastoral services and credible grievance procedures is required. Gender mainstreaming in all disciplines to ensure curriculum transformation and quality pedagogy is an important step towards achieving gender equality at the university. Affirmative action interventions in relation to female students, access to Technology and staff development of female academics is another important step. Policies and practical measures to ensure gender-friendly environment e.g. security on campuses through provision of adequate lighting and security will enhance women's experience of university life. Endnote 1 The word canvassed is used to describe the propagandist approach used in these state sponsored post-Beijing projects.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support for this study provided by DFID through the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. We also thank the management, staff and students of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and officials of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, the National Universities Commission and the House of Representatives. References Adedeora, Chi (2002). Beyond access for women: What does gender mean for universities? A Gender analysis; The Nigerian Universities System final Draft for the case studies of Nigerian Universities Project. African Association of Political Science (AAPS) (1994, September 1–5). Sexual harassment and violence. African Association of Political Science Newsletter. New Series, Vol. 16.
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Further reading Awe, Bolanle, & Nina, Mba (1987). Women's research and documentation (Nigeria). SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(4), 859−864. Bennett, Jane (2002). Exploration of a “gap”: Strategising gender equity in African universities. Africa Gender Institute E-Journal Launch Issue. (Retrieved from http://www.feministafrica.org/01-2002/jane. html) Birke, Lynda (1986). Women, feminism and biology: The feminist challenge. Brighton Sussex: Harvester Press.
A. Odejide et al. / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 552–561 Federal Ministry of Education (1989). Sexual harassment and examination malpractice. Unpublished Report. Feldman, Saul (1994). Escape from death house: Women in graduate and professional school education. New York: Mc Grawhill. Gaidzanwa, Rudo (1997). Gender analysis in the field of education: A Zimbabwean example. In A. Imam, Amina Mama, & F. Sow (Eds.), Expanding African social sciences (pp. 271−295). Dakar: CODESRIA. Gaidzanwa, Rudo. (2000). Academic careers and women at the University of Zimbabwe. Paper presented at the Conference on Gender Equity, Democracy and Human Rights, University of Zimbabwe, July. Goldstein, Joshua (1999). International relations. New York: Longman. Imasogie, Mosunmola (2002). Sexual harassment and female students in Nigerian Universities — A case study of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria. Paper presented at Seminar at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, June 2002. Longe Report (1991). Higher education in Nigeria beyond: Report of the commission on the review of higher education in Nigeria Lagos. Federal Government Printer. Mikell, Gwendoline (1997). African feminism: The politics of survival in sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Morley, Louise (2003). Quality and power in higher education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Narayan, Uma, & Harding, Sandra (Eds.). (1998). Border-crossings: Multicultural and post colonial feminist challenges to philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Obanya, Pai (2003). Girls and women's education: A perspective on the challenges in Nigeria.” A keynote address presented at the roundtable on building momentum to eliminate gender gaps by 2005, Abuja, and April 2003. Odejide, Abiola (2001). Women in management in higher education in Nigeria: The role of academic women's groups. Paper presented at the Association of Commonwealth Universities and Institute of Education London seminar on managing gendered change in higher education in selected commonwealth Countries. Johannesburg, February 9–11, 2001. Okin, Susan M (1999). Justice, gender and family. New York: Basis Book. Seidler, Victor (1998). In R. Chapman & F. Rutherford (Eds.), Fathering authority and masculinity. London: Macmillan. UNESCO (2004). Education for All: The quality imperative. Global monitoring report 2005. Paris: UNESCO.