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Education
is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing
the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or
others intellectually for mature life. Being an educated person means you have
access to optimal states of mind regardless of the situation. One is able to
perceive accurately, think clearly and act effectively to achieve self-selected
goals and aspirations. In order words education is a process of cognitive
cartography, mapping your experiences and finding a variety of reliable routes
to optimal states when one is found in a non-optimal states. An educated woman
understands her world well enough to deal with it effectively. Such women if
they existed in sufficient numbers would not leave the absurdities of the
present world unchanged. Education is an equalizer, i.e it brings about
equality between the rich and the poor.
So many ways have been propounded as means of improving a lot of women but the
most important of these ways are: education, health and hygiene. Of these three
education is the highest reason been that, it has been advocated that the
education of girls is an excellent investment, as nothing else has such power
to improve family health and also the lives of women themselves. In spite of
these women have limited access to education when compared to men. However, it
can be said therefore that the main focus of government education agenda is to
bring about optimal development of its human resources, which, put in another
words, is a viable source of human capital. This investment however will not be
complete without women education. Women from time immemorial have been saddled
with many family responsibilities and are traditionally assigned many 
roles
including custody of children, maintenance of the home, feeding the family, and
preservation of family health. Consequent upon those tradition role
expectations, they become a significant factor in socio-economic and political
development of a country. They forget that this obstacle has to be broken as a
good and quality education will enable women improve their families health
and diet, increase their productive ability, as well as enable them to
discharge their responsibilities as mothers and wives in the family and society
at large. The home ideally is the first and last school of a child and the
foundation of his/her socialization with the mother serving as first teacher.
Information in Nigeria reveals that women constitute about half the total
population of the country if not more than half and are also most vulnerable
group to disease and economic frustration. This is not good and as such should
be prevented. For example, the 1991 census of Nigeria, gave the proportion of
women as 49.7 percent of the over-all national population with 70 percent of
this group as illiterate.
The problem of male /female disparity in access to education in Nigeria is not
restricted to the primary school; rather it is almost the same for secondary
and tertiary institution. For instance, according to National Universities
Commission (UNC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and National
Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), 1999 statistical data as cited by
UNICEF (2001) it was revealed that out of a total number of about
500,000students that were admitted to tertiary institutions in Nigeria, female
enrolment represented only 34 percent. The imbalance in the number of male and
female enrolment is more pronounced in the polytechnics and in science and
engineering disciplines in the universities (NUCHEP, 2004). Hence it could be
inferred that a number of factor as well as some complicated and sensitive
problems have various ways interacted to delay or frustrate women aspirations
for education. This is not good and as such should be prevented. Women should
be given equal opportunity as men to enable them achieve their goals in life.
Provision of formal and functional education is needed for women, food,
clothing etc. it would empower them to fight against every form of
discrimination against their folks, assert themselves about their right to
equal treatment with their men counterpart as bonafide citizens of this nation,
Nigeria. It would enable women take decisions and accept responsibilities for
taking such decisions concerning themselves. Another implication of the poor
educational opportunity for women is involvement in low paying ventures. It has
been noted by Oladunni (1999) that because of societal stereotype and
stigmatization on certain professions and subject as the exclusive preserve of
men and or women most Nigerian women have been forced into less paid jobs like
teaching, nursing services, agriculture, small scale food processing,
secretariat duties, clerical duties, note counting in banks, cleaners and
middle level professional occupations. It was thus submitted that some of the
effects of this is that majority of these women are poor and impoverished.
Another implication of poor women education is that their lower access to
education automatically denies them the opportunity and power of influencing
significantly public policies and programs unlike male counterparts. Hence, it
is very clear from the article that women education is limited and such should
be avoided.
In conclusion, it is clear in this article, that Nigerian women are
educationally disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to formal education,
participation in policy formulation and policy implementation especially in the
education sector. It could be deduced that owing to our traditional
socialization process, Nigerian women have been mislead into believing that
aspiring for higher educational attainment is insignificant. After all, “women
education ends in the kitchen”. Women should be given the opportunity to prove
themselves and what they can do. Examples are Queen Amina, Dora Akunyili,
Okonji Iwuala, Oprah Winfrey and many more. The problem against women education
is many but they could be summarized under three major headings namely;
restricted access to education, reluctant to aspire and resistance to women
advancement within a patriarchal system. 
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