Female Education and Employment in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined female education and employment in Nigeria. The 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey data (NDHS, 2018) was used. After sorting out for missing data, 28,494 women’s individual data were used. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Multinomial logit regression. Only 0.3% of women in Nigeria are  unemployed while 99.7% are employed in skilled and unskilled jobs. However, only 13.4% of the women are engaged in skilled employment; 8.5% are in professional/technical/managerial jobs while 4.9% are involved in skilled manual. The majority (86.3%) are in the unskilled manual employment category; 1.6% in clerical, 49.4% in sales, 9.5% in services, 0.1% in unskilled manual and 25.7% in Agriculture. The likelihood of being involved in professional/technical/managerial employment by women in Nigeria increases with age (0.06), region {North West (1.18), South West (1.87}, educational level {secondary (0.68), tertiary (1.64)}, wealth index{richer (0.90), richest(0.95)}. On the other hand, the likelihood of being engaged in professional/technical/managerial employment type reduces with large household size >10persons (-0.71). Engagement of women in skilled employment types are driven by education while education discourages them in engaging in unskilled employment types. However, because the highest proportion of the women have secondary education, they are found more in the unskilled employment types. Also, engagement in skilled employment types is driven by wealth index while age drives skilled and unskilled employment types. Nigerian women are not much involved in skilled employment, the right policy should be put in place to educate girls beyond the secondary education level and enlighten them on the need to be involved in skilled employment.