Women and Rural Development in Nigeria: Some Critical Issues for Policy Consideration

Abstract: This paper examines the broad idea of gender and development with specific focus on some critical issues and challenges confronting the involvement of rural women in development activities in Nigeria. The paper addresses this issue through some theoretical and empirical review of literatures. Major impacts of women in rural development in Nigeria have been discussed and situated at historical perspectives through analysis of policies and programmes of government. Although women have served as critical agents of rural economic transformation, such role has been limited in scope, mostly shaped by the dictates of local patriarchy and religious beliefs. Their impacts have been felt indirectly in subsistent agriculture, and directly at the domestic domain. A number of challenges affecting their active involvement in rural development have been discussed to include the prevalence of cultural and institutional barriers as well as limited access to critical infrastructures in the rural areas. Policy recommendations focus on practical, legislative, legal and administrative actions that are particularly targeted at addressing those barriers