The United Nations Women and Gender Equality in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects
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Abstract
Over the years, the United Nations made several attempts to
prioritise gender equality through the establishment of
international treaties, conventions, and creation of entities
dedicated to address the needs of women. The UN Women
is one of such laudable initiatives. It is in this connection
that this paper examined the challenges of promoting gender
equality in Nigeria, focusing on the agenda set by UN Women.
Specifically, the paper looks at Nigeria’s progress so far in
attaining the four target areas of the UN Women in Nigeria.
The target areas include: Peace, Security and Humanitarian
Action, Economic Empowerment and Resilience, Leadership
and Political Participation, and Ending Violence against
Women. The paper leveraged the critical and liberal feminist
theories to analyse gender equality issues and the challenges
posed to the UN women efforts in promoting gender equality
in Nigeria. The paper argues that Nigeria has made some
progress in the target areas of the UN Women through the
ratification of international treaties, policy formulation, and
creation of agencies. The UN women has also demonstrated
commitment to its aim of promoting gender equality in Nigeria in its four thematic areas of engagement through campaigns
and advocacy, capacity-building, partnerships and strategic
alliances; service delivery and improving access to services.
However, there are challenges that hinder the promotion of
gender equality in the country. These challenges include: the
Nigerian law, insecurity, the political terrain, cultural and
religious practices, human rights record, funding, poverty;
and COVID-19 Pandemic. The findings of this paper reveals
that UN Women plays an important role in advancing gender
equality in Nigeria. The paper concludes that institutional
structures that hinders the progress of gender equality in
Nigeria should be addressed so as to solve the socioeconomic problems that has posed a major threat to the UN
women programmes and works. This, the paper recommends
that a lot can be achieved by creating institutions and
implementing policies that encourage and drive economic
growth among women in the country. Domesticating
international conventions and eliminating discriminatory laws
against women in the Nigerian constitution will also help
address the challenges of the UN Women in Nigeria.
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