The latest report released by the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has shown that women in Nigeria accounted for 41 per cent ownership of micro businesses in the country.
PwC presents the first of two reports highlighting the impact of women on Nigeria’s economic development in March –being the Women’s Month.
In the first paper, PwC assesses the impact of women on Nigeria’s economic development through analysis of women’s participation and representation in the private and public sectors.
In the second paper, the firm explored the barriers and challenges women face in the formal services sector with emphasis on ICT, financial services and Higher Education.
The report, which assessed the ‘Impact of Women on Nigeria’s economy’, showed that the percentage rate represents 23 million female entrepreneurs operating within the segment.
Commenting on the report, Chief Economist & Partner West Africa Financial Services Leader, PwC, Andrew Nevin, said the reports place Nigeria among the countries with highest entrepreneurship rates globally.
It added that the high-level participation of female entrepreneurs in the country is however often driven mainly by necessity, which is the norm in emerging markets where there is insufficient formal employment.
Nevin said in the formal sector, very important results are emerging and at the lower levels informal employment there is almost an even 50-50 split in the workplace between men and women, saying that however, as both sexes climb up the corporate ladder, women begin to decline in representation on the senior leadership teams and at the board level.
Besides, the report revealed that Nigeria ranked 128th out of 153 countries and 27th out of 53 countries in Africa, on the World Bank’s Global Gender Gap Index 2020 –which implies that the country still has a way to go in attaining gender equality and equal representation for women.
As a result, Nevin said women own only 20 per cent of enterprises in the formal sector in Nigeria. Furthermore, only about 12 per cent of Directors on corporate Boards of Directors are women.
“And taken all together, at the rate Nigeria is changing on these critical dimensions, the Nigerian gender gap in the economy will only close in about 100 years,” he added.
