Title: Barriers to Women's Economic Participation in Nigeria: A Policy Analysis
Authors: Chinaemelum I. Okafor (Ph.D)
Volume: 10
Issue: 8
Pages: 28-33
Publication Date: 2026/08/28
Abstract:
Nigeria's economic policy architecture has, on paper, moved steadily toward gender inclusion, culminating in the 2023 National Policy on Women's Economic Empowerment and its accompanying Action Plan. Yet female labour force participation remains concentrated in low-productivity informal activity, and the gender gap in financial inclusion has widened even as overall inclusion rates have improved. This paper examines why Nigeria's gender-responsive economic policies have produced limited transformation, using a qualitative documentary analysis of federal policy instruments issued between 2006 and 2025, triangulated with secondary data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the World Bank's Global Findex surveys, and the National Bureau of Statistics. Drawing on Kabeer's resources-agency-achievements framework and Sen's capability approach, the paper argues that Nigerian economic policy treats women's exclusion as a market failure correctable through access instruments such as credit lines and financial inclusion targets, while leaving untouched the underlying distribution of unpaid domestic labour, land tenure norms, and collateral requirements that produce that exclusion in the first place. The analysis identifies four recurring barriers, restricted access to secured credit, customary land tenure regimes that exclude women from property-based collateral, the absence of enforceable care infrastructure, and weak implementation capacity at subnational level, and shows how each barrier survives successive policy cycles because reform efforts rarely engage the household and customary institutions where economic exclusion is actually produced. The paper concludes that policy coherence, not additional instruments, is the more urgent reform priority, and proposes a shift toward measures that address the care economy directly rather than treating it as a residual concern.