LIMITATIONS TO WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN POLICY MAKING PROCESSES IN N

Abstract

A careful look at the socio-political landscape of Nigeria reveals a challenging narrative: Nigerian women are, to a large extent, missing from the political scene. The representation and participation of Nigerian women within political decision-making spheres as well as in the electoral are disproportionately limited. This is certainly a contradiction given the fact that significant advancements have been made by Nigerian women in sectors such as education and entrepreneurship in recent years. The blame for this state of affairs can be laid at the door of certain religious, biological, cultural, and even cognitive dynamics. This paper investigated the theoretical bandwidths of limited political participation for any democratic demographic, women‘s political participation in the historical background of Nigeria, the political decision-making process in Nigeria as well the cultural and socio-religious causes of limitation for women to determine the extent of the barriers to women‘s political participation and propose a blueprint for change. Through documentary analysis and a few anonymous interviews, this paper discovered that constitutional bias, gender-based violence and media bias, low literacy rates, and electoral gender quotas were the chief barriers to women‘s political participation in Nigeria. Finally, this paper found out that the vision of enhanced political participation for Nigerian women can be realized if there could be grassroots sensitization, constitutional reform, education, and empowerment for women as well as a nationwide awareness campaign employing media sensitization to support women in political parties.