GENDER MARGINALISATION AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL VOICE IN NIGERIA’S LEGISLATURE: THE CASE OF SENATOR NATASHA AKPOTI-UDUAGHAN
Keywords:
Gender, marginalisation, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, political voice, public officeAbstract
The study examined gender marginalisation and women’s political voice in Nigeria’s “hallowed chamber”, assessing the story of Senator Natasha. Gender marginalisation demonstrates women’s exclusion based on a systemic underrepresentation of women in political spaces, which is often reinforced by socio-cultural norms. One of the objectives of the study examines the extent of gender marginalisation in Nigeria’s political institutions. The study was anchored on the Spiral of Silence Theory by Noelle-Neumann (1974) and the Standpoint Theory by Sandra Harding (2004). The study adopted descriptive statistics and Chi-square to test the significance of the findings. A descriptive survey research design was employed, and data were collected using a Self-administered digital questionnaire via social media platforms to residents across four senatorial districts: Kogi Central, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, Rivers West, and Lagos West to a sample size of 384 derived from Krejcie and Morgan (1970) to respondents selected through multi-stage sampling technique. One of the findings revealed a significance value of 79.42 and 344.91 which exceeded the critical value of 9.488 at 4 degrees of freedom and 0.05 level of significance. Hence, the null hypothesis was rejected, indicating that cultural beliefs significantly hinder women’s political participation, while supportive government policies can significantly improve their legislative involvement. The study concludes that gender marginalisation remains a major barrier to women’s political voice in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that the National Assembly should reform its Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions Committee procedures to ensure impartiality, and gender sensitivity in handling complaints involving female legislators.
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