Staff and students’ gender education in a Nigerian Public University

Abstract

The University of Ibadan has invested resources in mainstreaming gender through awareness campaigns. While studies have devoted attention to only female students’ gendered experiences and perceptions on campus, they have not focused on factors affecting both staff and students’ gender education in the institution. Adopting a mixed method technique, we gathered data by administering two sets of questionnaire to staff and student respondents, testing their knowledge and understanding of some gender messages. Also, we supplemented the quantitative data with the data collected through in-depth interviews of staff and focus group discussion sessions among student representatives from the selected halls of residence. We discovered that though most staff and students did not understand the basic difference between sex and gender as concepts, they still exhibited some significant knowledge about gender sensitivity, gender equality, gender discrimination, gender friendliness, sexual harassment and sexual violence. However, we found that issues of intractable institutional traditions, selective attention, access to basic amenities and subjectivity shaped staff and students’ understanding
of gender knowledge. Consequently, these are factors, which influence gender education at the University of Ibadan. We suggest need for the institution’s gender mainstreaming office to focus gender messages on changing all staff and students’ negative opinions by tackling the identified factors to have a favourable influence on gender education on campus.