1. WOMEN IN TERTIARY EDUCATION AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE NEXUS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT
Helen O. Aderemi, Ph.D (OAU, Ife), MNCS, MNIM
Head, Technology Innovation and Enterprise Studies
Department,
Desk Officer, Gender Issues in Science and Technology
Academic Adviser, Campus Entrepreneurial Initiative
National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM)
(Federal Ministry of Science & Technology)
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
1 © NACETEM 2012
Date: 3rd May, 2012

2. Outline of Talk
 Preamble: Why Women? Why Tertiary Education?
Why Entrepreneurship?
 The Nexus between Entrepreneurship, Women and
Tertiary Education
 Entrepreneurial Mindset: Not popular but favourable
 Do we have Models?
 Roles for Stakeholders
 Concluding remarks
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3. WHY WOMEN?
WHY
ENTREPRENEURSHIP?
WHY TERTIARY
EDUCATION?
3

4. Why Women?
 0-14 years: 40.9%
(male  Women constitute a
critical mass of
32,476,681/female unharnessed
31,064,539) potentials
15-64 years: 55.9%  Speedy contribution to
(male national development
44,296,228/female  Greater efficiency if
women participate in
42,534,542) the production of
65 years and technologies of which
over: 3.1% (male they use.
2,341,228/female
Source:
http://www.indexmundi.com/nigeria/demograp
2,502,355) (2011 est.)
hics_profile.html
4

5. Why Entrepreneurship? Why Tertiary Education?
 Entrepreneurship is acknowledged to be a significant
driver of National wealth
 While Tertiary Educational Institutions are believed to be a
citadel where the younger generation are being developed
to meet the human capacity need of the country
 Competitiveness and relevancy
 Therefore, the need to understand the role of tertiary
educational institutions’ women in entrepreneurship
and also to develop appropriate and high impact
interventions to expedite their participation given the
dictates of unemployment, globalization, changing
business environment and new/emerging
technologies.

6. Labour Force Statistics 2006 – 2010 (CBN, NBS, 2010)
Unemployment rate by sex and age group (NBS, 2010)
6

7. WOMEN IN TERTIARY
EDUCATION AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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8. Education,
Entrepreneurship and
Significance for
women
 Educational empowerment of females especially
at the tertiary level is the spring board to other
forms of empowerment in the country
 This education when combined with
entrepreneurship brings about creativity,
innovation, self-employment, job & wealth
creation and socio-economic development
8

9. Women in Enterprises (Aderemi, 2010) Type of Business
Indicators non technological technological
business business
% No %
Age 20 - 29years 13.2 18.9
30 - 39years 28.6 41.5 Women in
40 - 49years 36.3 30.2
Above 50years 22.0 9.4
commercial
Mean Age = 41 entrepreneurship
Educational None 1.0 5.4
background trade skill 34.7 46.4
were 64% compared
Engineering 3.1 12.5 with manufacturing
Sciences 43.9 10.7
Humanities 17.3 25.0 (36%)
Level of no formal education 2.0 7.1
Education informal education
primary education 3.6
secondary education 27.0 30.4
tertiary education 68.0 8.9 Women irrespective
Financial Did not received 93.0 87.5
Support financial support of their education find
from
society/financial
it easier to engage in
system commercial
Received financial 7.0 12.5
support from
entrepreneurship
society/financial (101 out of 156)
system
Pre-venture not satisfactory 21.0 32.1
Economic Average 73.0 57.1
Situation Satisfactory 6.0 10.7
Marital single 15.0 23.2
status separated 3.0
married 78.0 75.0
Widowed 3.0 1.8
divorced 1.0
Role Model No role model 25.4 74.6
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Role model 43.6 56.4

10. The Gender Gap
in Tertiary
Institutions’
Entrepreneurship
Propensity
 An earlier study (NACETEM, 2010) reveal a negative
correlation of Entrepreneurial Interest with gender
 Male students were more likely to be entrepreneurial.
 Also, female students were less likely to choose
technological entrepreneurship over non-
technological
entrepreneurship, compared with their male
10
counterparts.

11. Relationship among gender, EI and
PBT
Source: NACETEM (2010)
 The results partly suggest the presence of a gender
imbalance in entrepreneurship among Nigerian
students, particularly with the females.
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12. ENTREPRENEURIAL
MINDSET: NOT
POPULAR BUT
FAVOURABLE
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13. Is this all
Entrepreneurial
that we
need?
Mindset is
Favourable –Why?
Today, 61% of Meanwhile we have
Nigerians are living in quality human capital,
poverty, 100m less highest economic
than $1/day (NBS, activities, good eye for
2010) business, voted the
happiest people in the
world
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14. Lecturers’ present involvement in Entrepreneurial
practice
Source: NACETEM (2010)
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15. Lecturers’ entrepreneurial disposition and risk
perception
Source: NACETEM (2010)
 Majority (43%) of the sampled lecturers have high
level of entrepreneurial disposition.
 The significantly high risk-aversion presupposes a
general attitude of indifference and sometimes
repulsiveness towards the idea of
entrepreneurship.
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16. DO WE
HAVE
MODELS?
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17. Case Studies:
Promoting entrepreneurship building in Education Institutes (EIs)
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT)
 (MIT) have, since 1880s, consciously provided their faculty and
graduates orientation for entrepreneurship.
 In the MIT Entrepreneurship Centre, students are allowed to submit business
plans as theses.
 In 2002, MIT began a program which had a phenomena impact on the US
economy. This was the creation of companies by its alumni.
 According to a report by BankBoston in 1997 (14 yrs ago), roughly 4000
companies were founded by MIT alumni and faculty members had created 1.1
million jobs and generated annual sales of $232 billion worldwide (New York
Times, 2004).
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18. Case Studies:
Chalmers in
Sweden
 The case of Chalmers is similar to that of M.I.T. Students
are encouraged to pursue business ideas.
 These ideas are transformed into genuine innovation
projects with the goal of forming companies at the end of
the students’ year and developing entrepreneurs.
 Small groups of students conduct real innovation projects
with the objective of starting a company when the training
is over.
 In Sweden, Chalmers University of Technology has
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created 240 companies from students’ projects within

19. ROLES
FOR
STAKEHOLDERS
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20. Some of these include:
 Teachers: Get & deliver high quality
education with skills development,
mentoring
 Regulators: Curriculum restructuring
both in secondary school & Univ. levels
to include entrepreneurial skills
 Regulators 2: Conducive environment
e.g. Business incubators, science parks,
entrepreneurial centres, TTOs, business
plan competition, CBN (2010) initiatives
etc
 Partners e.g. Carnegie: Financial
20 support, scholarships, competitive

21. CONCLUDING
REMARKS
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22.  There is a need to promote entrepreneurial
mindset in our educational institutions and provide
mentorship
 We are missing opportunities; Chance meets the
prepared mind and hand…. Are we prepared?
 Education with an entrepreneurial focus is an
economic investment that enhances growth
 Conducive environment e.g. Business incubators,
science parks, entrepreneurial centres, TTOs,
business plan competition , reward system, etc
 Partners e.g. Carnegie: Financial support,
scholarships, competitive grants, etc….with
special incentives for women.
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23. THANK
YOU FOR
YOUR
ATTENTION
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