The Economic Empowerment of Nigerian Women: Some Determinants of Access to Resources

Abstract

This paper investigates some key determinants of the economic empowerment of Nigerian women.' In recent years, the development community has focused increasing attention on the empowerment of women as a result, among other things, of the debilitating effects of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in Africa in the 1990s and the growing feminization of poverty. Bearing in mind the disproportionate share of responsibilities borne by women, as they seek to combine both productive and reproductive responsibilities within an inadequate resource base, women in Africa are among the poorest of all and are increasingly marginalized in Africa's current economic crisis and under structural adjustment policies. Kate Young reported that considerable evidence has accumulated throughout the 1980s of increasing maternal poverty as result of debt and SAPs and ... this has been accompanied by the feminization of poverty.2 While many reasons have been advanced for Africa's economic crisis, the general consensus in many quarters is that SAPs have rendered more visible the failure of orthodox top-down development paradigms.3 Consequently, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) proposed the Africa Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment (AAF-SAP) as a human-centered strategy of recovery and self-reliant development for the continent. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 1989 recommended a bottom-up strategy of empowerment of community organizations, peoples' organizations, and women's groups in order to enhance their access to resources and to strengthen their participation in decision making at all levels.4 These views were adopted as the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation at the Arusha Conference of Ministers of Planning and Finance in 1990 and were also endorsed by the heads of states of the Organization of Unity (OAU).