The latest report from the World Gender Gap report 2022 reveals that Nigeria ranks 123rd with a score of 0.639 out of a total of 146 countries. The ranking on gender gap parity, uses parameters like economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, political appointment and financial exclusion/wealth accumulation of the female gender in the world.
Although Nigeria moved 16 places up in the new ranking of the global gender gap index compared to 2021, it still has a gender gap of 63.9%. Nigeria has stayed between 60-63% in the last decade on all the sub-indexes, from political participation to economic participation.
Nigeria has less than 65% wealth equality. The factors responsible for the inequality in wealth are; gender pay gaps, gender gaps in financial literacy, life events that influence women’s participation in paid work and ability to accumulate wealth.
Rwanda, Namibia and South Africa lead the pack in Sub-Saharan Africa ranking, 6th, 8th and 20th globally while Nigeria ranks 27th out of 36 countries in the region.
Across the world, it will take 132 years to reach gender parity and for Sub-saharan Africa the magic year for gender parity is 2120, 98 years.
Of the four sub-indexes; economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, health and survival and political empowerment has the widest parity gap across all regions of the world.
Nigeria ranked 50th in economic participation and opportunity, 134th in educational attainment, 97th in health and survival, and 141st in political empowerment.
According to the report, gender gaps in wealth accumulation can be attributed to the underlying gender gap in the labour force. Although the margin between the male and female labour force in Nigeria is not wide and has also gotten better with increased labour participation of women over the years, the payment for labour of women is relatively low compared to that of males across all occupations.
Due to the underrepresentation of women in high-ranking positions, their investment and savings, which drive wealth, are often times lower than that of men.
Globally, women account for 38% of human capital wealth, while in low and middle-income countries, women account for one-third or lower of the human capital wealth.
In terms of access to finance, the report reveals that women in Nigeria have near equal rights in accessing financial services, near equal access to land assets and uneven rights to access non-land assets.
A PWC analysis revealed that 33% of females in Nigeria own bank accounts compared to the 46% of males that own bank accounts, the financial inclusion for women stood at 59%, which translates to 41% of women being financially excluded.
Although Nigeria currently lacks data on the disparity in wealth gaps between men and women, one research says that men are often paid twice what women are paid for the same labour. The gender pay gap calculator says that Nigerian men earn 71% more on average than Nigerian women.
Life events like childbirth, marriage and pregnancy are factors that might hinder a woman in participating in paid work which impacts on the genders ability to accumulate wealth. Issues like the burden of care which is still predominantly the woman’s responsibility impacts women’s capacity to build wealth. The maternal wage penalty, which increases as the number of children a woman has increases, is another factor hindering accumulation of wealth.
Inequality such as is seen in the gender parity gap hinders inclusive growth in Nigeria and as such balancing the scales could improve the GDP per capita through higher labour market participation and a lower gender pay gap.