Women in banking: Career choice and advancement

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that influenced the career choice and identify the barriers related to the career advancement of female bankers. Quantitative and in-depth interview methods were employed in this study. Close ended questionnaires were administered to female bankers in Metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria. Data were analysed using frequency counts, percentages and mean rankings. The findings showed that factors such as employment opportunities, hope for career advancement, personal skills, prestige and attractiveness of bank job, remuneration, educational qualification and job suitability influenced female bankers’ choice of a career. Family responsibilities, strict banking promotional policies and employment policies and practice were identified as barriers that impedes female career advancement. The study also discovered that there is no form of gender discrimination in the banking sector in Lagos state. The study concluded that the findings would help in the better understanding of the career development of female bankers in Lagos state, Nigeria. The study recommended that Banks promote the personal well-being of their female employees, introduce and effectively implement family friendly policies, and review the promotion and employment policies

Usefulness and expectations on skills development and entrepreneurship among women of low socioeconomic status in Ogun State, Nigeria

The acquisition of vocational training skills and entrepreneurial know-how is acknowledged as an added advantage and a safety net to navigate poverty, especially in dwindling economic recession time and massive unemployment. This study examined the factors influencing the usefulness and perceived realization of skills development/empowerment to encourage more women's involvement in small scale businesses and promote its effect on poverty alleviation in households across Nigeria. Data collection involved a structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews conducted post-the vocational skill/empowerment training. The training was organized among Campus Keepers in a private university in Ogun State, Nigeria. Forty Campus Keepers were selected using the systematic sampling technique from a total population of 224, and 37 of the 40 selected voluntarily participated in this study. The Campus Keepers were women with low socioeconomic status who worked as cleaners on the university campus. Five of the Campus Keepers were purposively selected as key informants for the study. Results showed that respondents who had earlier knowledge and vocational skills training reported that it leads to self-employment. This view was higher for respondents who had more people in their household than those with fewer people (OR = 22.7 [CI= .56, 921.31]). The perception that the training can lead to additional income was lower for respondents who reported that either they or their spouses were sole breadwinners in their household than for those who reported that both/others/none were breadwinners (OR = .05 [CI=0, 1.2]). The odds that the skills development/empowerment training will result in perceived improved business was higher for respondents who gained more knowledge/information from the training than those who did not (OR=29.19 [CI = 1.1, 777.48]). Findings from the qualitative study suggest that key informants who participated in past training were yet to establish a profitable business of their dream fully. Governmental policy and program intervention that incorporates these findings will lead to increased participation of the target population in similar training in the future, leading to poverty alleviation towards achieving the SDGs for Nigeria

Public Health Expenditure and Under-five Mortality in Nigeria: An Overview for Policy Intervention

Nigeria. METHODS: The autoregressive distribution lag technique was employed in this study in examining the long-run effect of public health expenditure on under-five mortality in Nigeria. Data were sourced from the World Development Indicators for the period 1985–2017. RESULTS: Results from the study showed that though public health expenditure is statistically significant, it showed a positive relationship with the under-five mortality. CONCLUSION: The implication of this result is that 1 unit increase in public health expenditure would improve increase under-five mortality rate by 1.56 units. However, in the Nigerian context, this can be better explained by the lack of proper health-fund coordination and other factors such as maternal education. Therefore, the study concluded by recommending that proper health-fund coordination should be put in place to ensure that budget allocated to the health sector is being spent properl