Culture, Religion, Empowerment and Inequality in Female Education in Northern Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

Historically, female education has suffered setbacks in some parts of Northern Nigeria mainly due to cultural and religious reasons— owing to the emphasis on the patriarchal social arrangement and politico-religious resistance to Western influences, etc. But modern democratic and capitalist developments position women's education as core to national educational reform that targets the North's relatively slow gains on international educational goals and development indicators. This study, therefore, examined relevant library data on constraints to women's education hence it aimed at exposing the barriers to female education in Northern Nigeria. It combined official Universal Basic Education (UBE), other agencies' data and personally conducted interviews to understand these factors and how they reflected historical conditions of women and education in Northern Nigeria. The objective was to examine conditions that shaped gender outcomes in education in Northern Nigeria, and analyze the overlap with long-held cultural and religious norms of gender differences. With a specific focus on literacy, it argued for integrating historically-relevant considerations in configurations of new educational reform. Being theoretical and analytical, it adopted the method of phenomenology, and concluded that some socio-political and religious factors bring about equality in Northern Nigeria, and this inequality has a huge negative impact in education especially as it concerns women education. The finding therefore was that as a consequence, that has hindered empowerment and development not just in the Northern but Southern Nigeria.