Residential location decision-making and gender in Nigeria

The paper examines women's involvement in residential location/relocation decision-making among tenants in Ibadan, Nigeria. The data used in the paper is from a larger cross-sectional survey of 721 households on gender and housing in Ibadan, Nigeria. The analysis in the paper focused on 365 subgroup of households that are tenants in the sample survey. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation and simple statistical techniques such as frequencies and percentages were used to analyse the data. The result shows that generally there is low involvement of women in residential location/relocation decision-making. There is significant intra-urban variation in the involvement of women in residential location/relocation decision-making. Significant relationships are found between the level of women involvement in residential location/relocation decision-making and their educational level, occupation, and marital status. In addition, significant relationships are found between cultural and social support variables and involvement of women in residential location/relocation decisions. These results suggest that female empowerment and greater involvement in decision-making could be greatly enhanced by improved access of women to education, employment, the provision of good and reliable social support facilities and a reorientation of women's view about responsibility for household housing provision.