Nigeria’s Gender Equality Crisis Report: A Call to Action

A newly released report by Dataphyte, “Gender in Nigeria 2025,” sheds light on the country’s persistent gender equality crisis. Despite global advancements in gender equality, Nigeria continues to grapple with systemic issues that hinder women’s empowerment.

The report’s findings are alarming.

Gender-Based Violence: remains a significant concern, with reports of rape surging from 29% in 2020 to 65% in 2022. Moreover, 48.2% of women believe wife-beating is justified under certain conditions, reflecting deep-seated cultural norms that perpetuate violence against women.

Economic Participation: is another area where women face significant barriers. While 77.1% of women are active in the workforce, 87.9% are confined to self-employment, with limited access to formal wage employment. This disparity highlights systemic barriers to women’s economic empowerment.

The report also highlights Digital Exclusion, with only 13.4% of Nigerian women having ever used a computer, compared to 21.8% of men. This persistent digital divide hampers women’s access to information and opportunities in the digital economy ¹.

Other key findings include:

Health and Reproductive Rights: 71.2% of married women lack autonomy in making sexual and reproductive health decisions.

Child Marriage & Trafficking: 12.5% of Nigerian women aged 15-49 were married before age 15, and 77.3% of trafficked persons in Nigeria in 2022 were female.

Dataphyte’s report serves as a critical resource for policymakers, advocates, and development organizations striving toward Sustainable Development Goals 5 (Gender Equality) and 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). The report provides data-driven insights and actionable recommendations to inform policies and initiatives that promote gender equity.

Joshua Olufemi, Founder of Dataphyte, emphasizes the need for strategic policy reforms and sustained advocacy to address these statistics. “We believe that with strategic policy reforms and sustained advocacy, these statistics can change, and gender equity can move from aspiration to reality”.

The report’s release coincides with Dataphyte’s fifth anniversary and its evolution into a socioeconomic data and policy think tank. Dataphyte aims to provide actionable insights for governance, policy, and advocacy, ensuring that data is at the heart of decision-making processes that shape the future of societies