Gender and Career Advancement in Academia in Developing Countries: Notes on Nigeria

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to examine gender differentials and career advancement among academia in Nigerian universities.While it is true that women have embraced academic opportunities and numbers of women obtaining PhD’s in all fields have increased substantially, gender gap remains where it matters most. This paper asks if there are organizational barriers that prevent women from making a significant career advancement, or are there social factors outside the organization that could possibly affect negatively academic career advancement, or do both contribute to the situation. . A sample size of 160 academics was selected across the faculties, and were administered questionnaires. 10 women academic were selected purposively for in-depth interview. The result shows that there is no statistically significant relationship between gender stereotypes and career advancement among the academic staff that hampers advancement of women in academics (X2=1.218 at P> 0.05 at df=1.). The result from qualitative study shows that there are organizational procedures in which women in academia had to comply with together with other social factors that slow down women‘s movement into higher management positions in the academia. As a result, there should be improvement in orientation and enlightement on criteria for career advancement and appointment to leadership positions.Keywords: Gender, Career Advancement, Leadership, Academia, University, Nigeria