The Impact of the Role of Women in Education

In this work, the impact of the role of women in education is investigated. Since Nigeria joined the rest of the world to allow women to participate fully in the society; from going to school to doing formal jobs, she has witnessed a remarkable improvement in educational sector and the workplace at large. However, a lot more needs to be done to the present poor quality control of standards in schools and the decadence in the country. The research addresses the gender distribution at various levels of education to determine if there is adequate population of women to make the required impact, given that- the hand that rocks the cradle determines a nation’s development. From the study, it was observed that notable Nigerian women achievers had good education. The statistics from Imo state, reveal that the number of female teachers outnumber males at both primary and secondary schools by more than 80%, even with the decrease in number of teachers over time, due to poor remuneration, there was a continuous increase in female teachers. On the other hand, at the tertiary institutions, women were greatly under-represented in teaching, research and administrative positions. In view of the crucial role of quality education in development, and higher education in particular, there is an urgent need to involve more women at administrative positions in the reform of the educational sector due to their courage and passion to drive reform. Leadership training is recommended for more women to enhance their innate characteristics- multi-tasking, perseverance, willingness to share power and empower others, etc. In addition, many more merit scholarships should be instituted by government and private organizations for women to pursue postgraduate studies to boost capacity for research & development.