AUGUST 2023 ATUPA ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
THEME: “Mainstreaming TVET for Skills Development, Mobility and Resilient Economies in Africa”
TOPIC: Strengthening Women Capacity, Participation & Gender Equality Through TVET Institutions for Sustainable Development in Nigeria.
Economic empowerment means efforts that strengthen people’s capacity to engage in, contribute positively to and benefit from economic/growth processes according to the value of input, and more importantly, based on inclusivity, gender equality, and respect for human dignity. These critical factors do not only improve women participation in building sustainable economies but make it possible for stakeholders to negotiate a fairer distribution of benefits from the growth process. A recent data from United Nations (UN) Women organization found that all women in both developing and developed economies face gender differences in law. For example, more than 2.7 billion women across the world are legally restricted from holding certain political positions, organizational leadership roles, or having the same choice of jobs as men. In a 2018 assessment of 189 economies, UN Women research found that 104 countries still implement laws that prevent women from venturing into specific careers. The study further revealed that 59 countries have no laws or robust mechanisms for prosecuting workplace issues relating to violence and sexual harassment. Also, husbands in 18 countries have legal rights to prevent their wives from engaging in paid or volunteer jobs. These circumstances reduce women’s chance of acquiring relevant knowledge, participating in the labour market, and contributing their quota in economic development. In many countries under review, the active workforce age (25 to 54 years) favours women and men by 63% and 94% respectively. When girls (aged 15 and above) and older women (aged 55 and above) are included in the gender participation analysis, UN Women highlights that women’s ration reduces 48.5% (that is, 26.5$ lower than that of men). Globally, women have a higher unemployment rate and are more likely to be unemployed than men. Interestingly, this negative trend has remained unchanged between 2018 and 2023 except in informal and vulnerable jobs where women are over-represented in developing countries by 7.8% or 4.6% (excluding those in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing).
Women’s economic empowerment is pivotal to building capacity, strengthening participation in economic activities, and creating effective structures for protecting women’s rights and enforcing gender equality. To actualize these growth processes in global economies, women need unhindered/equal access to and control over capital and other productive resources, including the rights to take decisions on their own time for family/work engagements, private lives, and bodies. Women should also have rights to decent work, an increased voice, and meaningful participation in organizational/economic decision-making processes at home and across all levels in global institutions. It is a fact that economies advance when more women work. Women capacity, participation, and gender equality contribute to economic diversification and add a significant boost to productivity in addition to numerous positive development outcomes although economic growth in this context does not automatically lead to a reduction in gender-based inequality. Global economies lose around 15% of their GDP to gender gaps. Therefore, governments and global institutions are increasing investment in and awareness for women’s and girls’ education to improve inclusion, equality, and sustainable development. In essence, increased educational attainment, including upskilling and re-skilling for the gender are a lifetime course that support rapid technological and digital transformation thereby increasing women’s social status, income-generation opportunities, involvement in the formal labour market, as well as health and overall wellbeing. The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes strategies for empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the corporate world.
Gender issues in Nigeria are complex and multifaceted. There are religious beliefs and diverse cultures that restrict women from acquiring formal education, joining the labour force, and expressing their alienable human rights without restrictions. During a 2018 press conference in Germany, then-President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, re-enacted the notion of gender equality by saying that women’s roles are limited to the kitchen and the “other room.” Although he made the personal statement bearing his wife in mind, local and global rights activists assumed his analysis represents a general perception of how women are treated in Nigeria—and they are not totally wrong. According to Pankaj Mishra (an Indian writer), women can become geniuses of the first order if granted equal opportunity with men in formal education and vocational choice, and importantly, recognized for their contributions to sustainable development of societies through their best intellectual abilities.
On this backdrop, the International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT) in 2021 estimated female to male labour force participation in Nigeria to be 80:43 – its highest percentage in the last thirty years. However, many African countries, including Nigeria, are leveraging the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) with support from the Association of Technical Universities and Polytechnics in Africa (ATUPA) as one of the most effective Human Resource (HR) development strategies for embracing diversity, inclusion, and gender equality to train and modernize technical workforce for rapid industrialization and national development. This paper examines the institutional, social, cultural, legal, and curricular-related factors that strengthen or impede women participation in growth processes. Other neglected factors that have high significance to women capacity and participation in economic activities are sexual harassment, lack of confidence, job stress, intimidation, and gender discrimination in masculine organizational culture which restricts women in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) workforce. The rationale of this paper is to analyse the capacity and effectiveness of TVET institutions to consistently deliver entrepreneurship education that enhances women’s entrepreneurship intentions, combats unemployment, and drives industrialization in Nigeria.