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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1577765
Skill Acquisition in TVET and Access to Employment in Nigeria: A Gender Perspective
Provisionally accepted- 1Asian Institute of Technology, Khlong Luang District, Thailand
- 2Walailak University, Tha Sala District, Thailand
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Gender roles define women's involvement in skilled labour, leaving women with low skills and income while responsible for devalued household work. This study sought to determine gender bias in skills acquired by TVET employees (graduates) and the impact of gender on employment opportunities of TVET graduates who are employees in TVET business organisations. A construct of 5 hard skills and 7 soft skill sets was made from the literature to assess skill acquisition from employees in 7 seven TVET fields: Business studies, radio, television, and electronics (RTE) repair, automobile vehicle repairs, block laying, bricklaying and concreting, electrical installation, hotel management and catering, and welding and fabrication. Responses from a survey questionnaire and quantitative data analysis revealed no gender difference in the courses taken by TVET graduates (χ 2 = 2.82; df = 6 p=0.831). There was a gender bias (p<0.05) in skills perceived to have been acquired by the TVET graduates. Gendered job descriptions defined the bias in skills such that women in hotel management/catering had the edge over men in all skills. In contrast, men in the fields of RTE, block laying, bricklaying and concreting, electrical installation and welding and fabrication had the edge in some skills except for automobile vehicle repairs where female employees surprisingly held the edge with financial resource management skills. There was a significant gender difference (p<0.05) in agreement to skills impacting TVET graduates' access to employment with division along gender job descriptions. Gender gaps exist for skills in the various disciplines of TVET in tandem with gendered job descriptions, and employability in some fields does not solely depend on the applicant's skills.
Keywords: TVET (technical and vocational education and training), skill acquisition, Gender -, Employment, Graduates and the employment
Received: 16 Feb 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Emah, Kusakabe, Doneys and Pathak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shubham Pathak, Walailak University, Tha Sala District, Thailand
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