A Critical Examination of Gender Equity in Information Management Leadership Positions in Nigerian Public Institutions

This study critically examines gender equity in information management leadership positions within Nigerian public institutions, deploying intersectionality theory and critical feminist methodology to analyse the structural, cultural, and institutional forces that determine gender outcomes in archival, records, and information management leadership. Despite documented workforce feminisation in Nigerian information management at entry levels, senior leadership positions in archives, records management, and information governance remain disproportionately occupied by men, a pattern inadequately explained by existing human resource management literature. The research employs a critical qualitative methodology combining feminist discourse analysis, institutional ethnography, and in-depth interviews with sixty-two information management professionals (both leadership holders and non-leadership holders) across federal and state institutions in all six geopolitical zones. Intersectionality Theory, the Gender and Organisational Theory, and the Feminist Institutionalism Framework provide the analytical architecture, with literature from 2018 to 2024 on gender in Nigerian public administration supporting the study. The study produces an original structural analysis of gendered power in information management institutions and develops a Gender Equity Institutional Reform Framework for the Nigerian public sector. Recommendations target the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, the National Archives Commission, and civil service reform commissions. Keywords: gender equity, information management leadership, public institutions, intersectionality, Nigeria