Gender, Power, and Entrepreneurship in Northern Nigeria: A Feminist Political Economy Analysis

This dissertation applies feminist political economy analysis to the study of gender, power, and entrepreneurship in Northern Nigeria, developing an original theoretical account of how patriarchal power structures, Islamic legal traditions, and political economy dynamics jointly constitute the distinctive constraints and opportunities that shape female entrepreneurship in the North West and North East zones. Mainstream gender and entrepreneurship research has focused predominantly on individual-level barriers and motivational differences between male and female entrepreneurs, while the structural and systemic analysis offered by feminist political economy provides a more complete explanation of why female entrepreneurship in Northern Nigeria follows such distinctively different patterns from both male entrepreneurship in the same context and female entrepreneurship in Southern Nigeria. The dissertation employs a multi-method feminist research design combining critical discourse analysis of policy documents and media representations of Northern Nigerian female enterprise with ethnographic fieldwork in Kano and Maiduguri over 18 months, including participant observation in women's trade networks and cooperative organisations, and 50 in-depth interviews with female entrepreneurs, community leaders, and gender policy officials. Theoretical contributions include an original Northern Nigerian Gendered Enterprise System framework that integrates purdah mobility economics, Islamic legal opportunity structures including mudaraba finance, women-only commercial spaces as feminist economic geography, and the role of male family gatekeepers as entrepreneurial intermediaries. The dissertation argues that effective female entrepreneurship policy in Northern Nigeria must engage with patriarchal power structures rather than treating gender constraints as individual barriers. Keywords: feminist political economy, gender and entrepreneurship, Northern Nigeria, patriarchal structures, female enterprise.