Gender Inequalities In Education

While growing up most children go through certain experiences which are either favorable or otherwise unfavorable, these experiences are what shape the lifestyle of individuals, and students as well and their academic performance in school. Persistent poor academic performance of students in the Nigerian secondary and tertiary schools has been a source of concern to parents, teachers, educators, educational institutions, and the Nigerian government (Adeyegbe, 2002; Akinsolu, 2010; Asikhia, 2010; Adeyemi, 2011; Olorundare, 2011; Oluwatimilehin and Owoyele, 2012). Also lifestyle of addiction to drugs, alcohol and mental illnesses such as depression are linked to adversity experienced during childhood. Early childhood is a sensitive period of

Gender inequality is the unequal treatment or perception of people based on their gender, which arises from differences in socially constructed gender roles- sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality.
Furthermore, gender roles assigned to us while growing up influence our motive to achieve, as men are always given preferential treatment on most issues, in the family the male child is always considered the head of the household, even when he is much younger than the female child. All these are subconsciously planted in her that as a woman she is not supposed to achieve more, earn more than her husband as the case may be. Childhood adversity and gender roles influence the desire of individuals to achieve, adverse childhood experiences are some of the factors that shape a child perceptions and how he or she views the society around him or her. A child raised in a violent environment tends to become violent as he or she would see such as the norm, likewise children who experience abuse, they can become abusers themselves or find it difficult trusting

The term achievement motives refers to compensational motives which is derived from the childhood experience (Wang,1992). Motivation is the basic drive for all our actions. Motivation involves our needs, desires and ambitions in life. Achievement motivation is what drives us to reach success and achieve all our desires, goals or ambitions in life. Achievement goals affect the way we perform a particular task and represent a desire to show competence (Harackiewicz, Barron, Carter, Lehto, and Elliot, 1997). Motivation is considered to be the driving force behind a person’s actions. While achievement motivation are behaviors dedicated to developing and demonstrating higher ability. Achievement motivation according to Martin and pear(2003) is a desire for significant accomplishment for mastering skills or ideas for control, and rapidly attaining a high standard. FurthermoreFurthermore, achievement motivation is the desire to do a difficult work, facing high criteria and surpass others(Zanobini and Usui,