Gender Mainstreaming in Nigeria's 2019 General Elections: Evidence and Perspectives from Kano and Oyo states

Abstract

Nigeria’s politics have been accused of gender imbalance since independence, and scholarship is replete with discussions of factors responsible for the low level of women’s participation and representation in politics, and women’s poor showing in electoral contests. Most studies of women’s political participation in Nigeria have taken a unidirectional approach of analysing or discussing women’s marginalisation in both appointive and elective offices. This study replaces the unidirectional approach with a multidirectional and multistakeholder analysis of the gender mainstreaming effort in Nigeria’s 2019 general election. With a focus on Kano and Oyo states, we argue that increased gender consciousness has not translated to any significant improvement in women’s representation in politics, thus implying that mainstreaming gender is of no effect if women’s participation in politics does not translate to a substantial representation of women in both number and influence.