ABSTRACT
Gender is explicitly absent in Nigeria’s quota-based policy for “fair” access to higher education (HE) despite indications of persistent gendered patterns of access across the country. Against this backdrop, this chapter discusses gender as an important social category deserving a significant and reconceived policy and practice attention specifically in relation to equitable HE access. Drawing on a qualitative study of admission practices and outcomes in Nigeria, I explore young women’s lived experiences of navigating university access in a context where women are often framed as “beneficiaries” rather than victims of transactional sex, where there are varying but often intense levels of tension between aspiration to HE and the social expectation of marriage, and where even the most passionate expressions of the agency are constantly mediated by deeply entrenched patriarchal values. From multiple feminist standpoints, I present a gender analysis, including far-reaching intersectionalities, that problematises the quota-based policy silence on gender. This demonstrates the ways that the silence connects with institutionalised processes and conventional practices within the admission system to produce discrimination, advance gender-based exclusions and sustain access inequalities. Highlighting that unnuanced reforms could alternatively create a smokescreen, the chapter offers suggestions for potentially impactful policy, practice and research directions.
