Farida Sani Nahuche
Department of Sociology,
Sokoto State University, Sokoto
Email: faridanahuche0@gmail.com
Geno Ardo
Department of Sociology,
Sokoto State University, Sokoto
Email: genoardo2@gmail.com
&
Samaila Shehu
Department of Sociology,
Sokoto State University, Sokoto
Email: samailasifawa3@gmail.com
Abstract
Making gender mainstreaming for gender equality, is one of the most important issue in the contemporary world today, mainstreaming gender is a methodology that ensures that women and men have equal access to opportunities, rights, rewards, and society’s valued resources. Women in Nigeria, despite the effort and provision of all those opportunity for the women in Nigeria, available evidence indicates that women have continued to be marginalized in all aspect of life, such as political, economic, social, cultural, marital, and educational aspect of life. However, some valuable concepts and significant reason are used in the paper, therefore, this paper identified and discussed some key issues related to gender mainstreaming in Nigeria. Some of these issues are the conceptual definitions of gender, gender mainstreaming, and gender equality, significant strategy used in making gender mainstreaming most valuable concept, reasons for the adoption and propagation of mainstreaming for gender equality, mainstreaming gender strategy for national development, challenges of gender mainstreaming for gender equality in Nigeria, as well as the theory of mainstreaming and sustainable theory. Finally, this paper has provided some importance recommendations to boost up gender mainstreaming in Nigeria.
Keywords: Gender, Gender mainstreaming, Gender equality, Mainstreaming strategy.
Introduction
The concept of gender mainstreaming is a globally related issue and also, a subject of considerable intellectual discourse, policy making, and debates to all developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries. Nigerian laws including sections 40 & 42 (1) and section 77(2) of the 1999 Constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria, outlaws every form of gender discrimination and the Nigerian National Gender Policy of 2006, proposes a 35 per cent affirmative action quota for women to complement. Despite the effort and provision of all those opportunity for the women in Nigeria, available evidence indicates that women have continued to be marginalized in all aspect of life, such as political, economic, social, cultural, marital, and educational aspect of life. (Omotoso & Enweremadu, 2022).
Gender mainstreaming became a strategy introduced to address the challenges to women, including recognition of the inequalities within households, unpaid labour, feminisation of poverty, differences in legal status and entitlements, discriminatory practices, gender-based violence and ultimately in educational, economic, social, cultural, and political power where decisions are made. Among other things, gender mainstreaming aims at determining ‘who will be consulted and how, on matters such as the formulation of the issue, the definition of information needs, and assessment of options and how policy choices would be formulated and presented to capture gender equality issues. (UN 2002). Gender mainstreaming includes decentralising to achieve equality, envisioning an equitable future by engaging gender impact assessment methods, gender budgeting, and gender disaggregated statistics. This process is more successful in practice when it afflict factors cultures, norms and state disposition so that In practice, gender mainstreaming spotlights a wide range of activities that institutionalized equality by entrenching gender-sensitive practices and norms in the structures of public policy. Mainstreaming a gender perspective in all types of activities (referred to as gender mainstreaming) is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality. Mainstreaming is not an end in itself but a means to the goal of gender equality. Mainstreaming involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities – policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects. Development of an adequate understanding of mainstreaming requires clarity on the related concepts of gender