Typical evidence of the gross inequality in access to employment is in the recent employment exercise by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
In a recent report of the NNPC, in compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s (EITI) Open Data requirements, it was revealed that only 18.3 percent of the agency’s total staff strength are women. This figure shows how evasive gender equality in employment remains in Nigeria and particularly in terms of employment and education. The most concerns are the gross inequalities in access to paid employment and significant gaps between men and women in the labour market.
World over, gender equality is an important issue that has shaped policies, actions and plans of government and private establishment alike. Owing to this importance, the United Nations accorded it a place in one of 17 Global Goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goal 5 aims to ensure that there is an end to discrimination against women and girls everywhere.
However, the reverse seems to be the case in Nigeria as statistics show a deepening of the gap between males and females. The Nigerian labour force statistics as of 2019 show that 45.57 percent of the total labour force is women. That is, 28,457,207 women make up the total 62,447,230 labour force population. Labour force comprises people ages 15 and older who supply labour for the production of goods and services during a specified period. It includes people who are currently employed and people who are unemployed but seeking work as well as first-time job-seekers.
A female to male employment statistics like that of the NNPC draws a lot of question as to why women have scanty formal employments in organizations. An analysis of the growth rate of the female labour force in the last ten years shows that it has not experienced a 1 percent growth rate. While the total labour force of Nigeria has seen a growth rate of 28% in the same period.
A review of the labour force with basic education qualification shows that women make up 62.02 percent of the 60.66 percent of the working-age population with a basic level of education. While men make up for 59.56percent. Basic education comprises primary education or lower secondary education.
For the labour force with intermediate education, the percentage of the female working-age population with intermediary education is 66.18% while that of the male population is 71.86 percent. Intermediate education comprises upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education.
On the other hand, for the labour force with advanced education, the percentage of the female working-age population with advanced education is 73.68 percent, while that of the male population is 74.76percent. Advanced education comprises short-cycle tertiary education, a bachelor’s degree or equivalent education level, a master’s degree or equivalent education level, or doctoral degree or equivalent education level.
From the above statistics, the difference in percentage across all levels of education is not enough for the female unemployment rate to be 6.3 percentage higher than that of the male unemployment rate.
Considering NNPC’s operations deals a lot with engineering, one might argue that the gender distribution of staff is justifiable because only a few women study engineering. However, from the breakdown of staff distribution, only 28.2percent (1,869 staff) of the total workforce is in operations engineering. The other 71.8 percent of the staff are distributed across health, safety and environment units, Finance, Accounts, Audit, Tax and Insurance, commercial staffers, general engineering staff, supply chain management staff, Information technology personnel, and medical staff. Within which there could be a lot of opportunities for women.
Instead of being in the formal employments of these nature, a lot of women predominate informal employments without benefits like social protection and health insurance.
The various sectors of Nigeria’s economy have been mostly occupied by men for a long time without much sustainable development. As such, it is time to incorporate women fully into the process of running the economy. This involves empowering women through gainful formal employment and motivating them to aspire for top leadership positions.
More specifically, the government should create policies that will reserve an equitable number of employment positions for women in every organization. This should extend to courses at tertiary institutions. Especially those courses like engineering that have a high level of masculinity attached to it. As a motivating factor, there should scholarships for women who wish to study these courses.
Ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls is not only a basic human right, but it also has a multiplier effect across all other development areas.