Does Gender Inequality Retard Productivity in Nigeria?: a search for evidence

Abstract

The paper adopted the bounds test and autoregressive distributed lag approach to evaluate the impact of gender inequality in education on real productivity in Nigeria using quarterly data from 1985 to 2011. Empirical evidence to establish the rejection of the null hypothesis of no cointegration among the variables was provided . The empirical results suggest that gender inequality in education depresses real productivity, with an output elasticity of -0.1 per cent per quarter. Further empirical evidence indicates that higher school enrolment of males enhances real productivity in Nigeria, while the influence of female school enrolment was not affirmative owing to some socio-cultural factors that tend to inhibit female participation in economic activities. The paper, thus, recommends the implementation of deliberate policies to improve female participation in economic activities besides strengthening the policy on affirmative action for women in Nigeria.