Education Response Paper

The accessibility of education is important but the quality of the education received is just as important.  In the case of Nigeria, even when girls have access to education, it does not often counteract, but rather perpetuates, the cultural tradition of patriarchy by causing girls to internalize these subordination values.  This creates a gap between the number of women who have received education and the number who utilize it in the work force.  Also, it supports an attitude towards education as irrelevant to women if they will not eventually use it in the labor force (Anugwom 131).  In addition, there is a trend towards educating women about anything but math and science in the curriculum of many schools.  The number of women who study and then teach in engineering, for example, is incredibly disparate to the number of men, in comparison to the much smaller gender gap in fields such as the arts (Ojobo 100).  Thus, in the case of Nigeria, despite improvements in enrollment and drop-out rates for women, education still remains inaccessible to some and, even if attained, does not outweigh some cultural factors in order to reach its full potential for development in political, social, economic, and health-related areas.