Gendered Dimensions of Lifelong Learning in Post-Conflict Reconstruction in North East Nigeria: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis

This study applies feminist political ecology to examine the gendered dimensions of lifelong learning in post-conflict reconstruction in North East Nigeria, developing an original analytical framework that bridges gender studies, political ecology, and adult education scholarship. Feminist political ecology examines how gender mediates the relationship between communities and their environments, including social, political, and economic environments. Applied to lifelong learning in post-conflict contexts, this framework illuminates how gender, conflict ecology, and learning opportunity interact to produce highly differentiated educational trajectories for women and men in reconstruction settings. This study uses a feminist ethnographic methodology, embedding the researcher for 14 months in post-conflict communities in Borno and Adamawa States. Data collection combines participant observation of community learning events and reconstruction activities, life history interviews with 70 women and men of diverse age, ethnic, and displacement histories, and analysis of reconstruction programme documents from government and humanitarian agencies. Feminist political ecology analytical tools including situated knowledge, power geometry, and gender-differentiated access to learning resources are applied. Findings establish that post-conflict learning ecologies in the Northeast are profoundly gendered, with women's learning constrained by displacement trauma, security movement restrictions, domestic workload burdens intensified by conflict losses, and exclusion from male-dominated community reconstruction decision-making forums. Women-led informal community learning networks, however, demonstrate remarkable resilience and pedagogical sophistication. The study contributes an original Gendered Post-Conflict Lifelong Learning Ecology Model and recommends gender-transformative adult education programming as a core component of Northeast reconstruction.

Keywords: feminist political ecology, post-conflict learning, gender, North East Nigeria, reconstruction.