Association of African Universities -

This study maps the changing character of the university system in Nigeria. Charmaine Pereira asks four questions on gender:

How have gendered structures and processes at the contextual and systemic levels affected universities?
In what ways have the workings of the university system contributed to gender differentials?
How have women contributed to policy issues in universities?
What are the gender implications of existing reforms of the university system?

Charmaine Pereira examines a wide range of gender issues within the Nigeria university system, concentrating on the federal universities. She looks at the empowering possibilities of education, especially for women; this approach enables her to examine issues of power vis-à-vis the individual and society, in contrast to the prevailing functional approach towards education in contemporary Nigerian society. The university system tends to be spoken of in gender-neutral terms; however she finds that the effects of its workings are that gender disparities are glaringly obvious.

Charmaine Pereira uses gender analysis to outline the parameters of the university system in Nigeria and its development; this enables her to highlight gendered implications even where none are presumed to exist. She draws attention and applies scrutiny to those things that are taken for granted within and beyond the academy. They include the presumption that the voices of authority, the producers and targets of knowledge and the majority of decision makers are male. To the author the prevalence of the system is not an adequate justification of its inequity. She concludes that the masculinist processes and structures of norm setting ought to be recognized as the problem, rather than simply recognizing the effects in terms of the absence of women in universities.
James Currey Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria) Plc
OXFORD IBADAN
www.jamescurrey.co.uk

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