Analyzing Women’s Participation in Politics and Governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: The Liberal Feminists’ Perspective

Abstract

Nigeria has a long history of gender inequality. However, since the return of democracy in 1999, there has been a noticeable but inconsistent increase in the level of women’s participation in politics and governance. Observably, Nigeria recorded 7.06% representation of women in the National Assembly in 2011, which is the highest in twenty-four years. Thereafter, there has been a decline in women’s representation in the National Assembly from 5.65% in 2015 to 4.17% in 2019 and 3% in 2023 respectively. Addressing such inequality, Liberal Feminists advocated gender equality through affirmative action from the political and social philosophy perspectives. This paper therefore analyses women’s participation in politics and governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic using the Liberal Feminism lens. The survey research design with a qualitative approach was adopted to achieve this objective. Specifically, a critical review of literature was done while other secondary data were sourced from relevant databases. Findings revealed that progress towards gender equality in Nigeria has been slow due to cultural and societal attitudes towards women, socioeconomic factors, and systemic barriers among others. Findings showed that about 15,000 candidates contested various positions in the 2023 general elections with only 10% women. This paper concluded that the achievement of gender parity depends largely on affirmative measures, legal and policy reforms, the introduction of a quota system, and programmes that promote women's political and economic empowerment, which forms the thrust of Liberal Feminism. Among other things, the need to strengthen legal frameworks while addressing barriers that strengthen gender inequality in political participation was recommended.