Gender inequality: Evidence from male/female staff interaction in selected universities in southeast, Nigeria

Abstract

The struggle to improve the conditions of the female gender has
continued to receive significant attention over the decades.
Gender inequality has been a prevailing topic that has received a
wide recognition from various scholars and writers. However,
despite, these wide recognitions, female subjugation is evident in
every stratum of human society. This study provides evidence of
this by focusing on gender inequality in education at the tertiary
level, considering features of male/female staff interaction. The
following question has therefore driven this study: what type of
utterances is used by male staff of higher institutions to show
gender bias in male/female staff interaction? Participant
observation is the major instrument of data collection. However,
relevant library sources have been utilized. The theoretical thrust
of this study is feminism, which advocates for equal rights
between men and women. The contextualization cues theory of
John Gumperz has been appropriated to discuss the type of
utterances which feature in male/female staff interaction. The
findings indicate that gender sensitive expressions still
characterize male utterances and these are laced with
paralinguistic features such as shaking the head, interruption,
frowning etc to show disapproval against female responses.