WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING IN THE GOVERNMENT OF AKWA IBOM STATE, NIGERIA 1999-2013

The study examined the status of women’s participation in decision-making in the government of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The period of the study covered 1999 – 2013. The study was necessitated by the gross under-representation of women in decision-making realm in the government of Akwa Ibom State. Two research questions and two null hypotheses were developed to guide the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The universe population for the study was 3,902,051 made up of women across the three Senatorial Districts of Akwa Ibom State which included: 1,354,215 women from Uyo Senatorial District, 1,220,053 from Eket Senatorial District and 1,327,783 from Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District. Stratified sampling technique was adopted to select 585 women across the three Senatorial Districts of the State. The Stratified sampling technique was adopted to give equal representation of the participants in the study. Data was gathered through primary and secondary sources. The primary sources were Interview and questionnaire, while the secondary source comprised textbooks, journals, magazine internet materials, etc. The questionnaire was a five-point rating scale of Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Undecided (UD), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD) with corresponding values of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. The data collected were analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) at p≤ 0.05 levels of significance using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 16 package.