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Abstract

Nigerian women account for almost half of the country’s population, yet they represent a minuscule percentage of elected positions. Many scholars have attributed this to the patriarchal system inherent in Nigeria. This study, however, submits that the rate at which women support women politicians during elections is a major contributing factor to unequal gender representation in Nigerian politics. The concept of the glass ceiling and postcolonial theory guided the explanatory framework for this study. The study was conducted among women within voting age in Ibadan, in southwestern Nigeria. The study adopted a mixed-method design to generalize and gain deep insights. Hence, the questionnaire was used to elicit quantitative data while the Key Informant interview (KII) was used to collect qualitative data. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS version 20 while qualitative data was content analyzed. While 87.3% of the respondents claimed they supported women politicians during elections, only 16.7% voted for them. On the reasons why women support female politicians, about 38.0% stated that they supported them because of their perceived ability to represent the interests of women better than men. However, 21.7% of the respondents felt that supporting women in politics may expose them to the danger of political violence inherent in Nigeria. Furthermore, negative stereotypes against women politicians were also found to be among the major impediments to their victory at the polls. Awareness campaigns for women’s participation in politics, therefore, should also focus on encouraging women to vote for other women during elections, as that is the major means of ensuring adequate women’s representation.

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