GENDER DISPARITY IN TETFUND’S (AST&D) ACCESSIBILITY: IMPLICATIONSON WOMEN AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (THE CASE STUDY OFFEDERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, TECHNICAL OMOKU, RIVERS STATE)

DIRISU, CHIMEZIE G.
and ADIMELECHI, HENRY C.

Abstract

TETFund intervention are in the areas of academic staff training and development (AST&D), Conference attendance, research, manuscript development, and Teaching practice, besides infrastructural development and ICT. This paper adopts an ex-post-facto research design to evaluate the level of accessibility and utilization for AST&D in order to ascertain the gender parity with regard to the academic programme, discipline and spatial location in Federal College of Education Omoku. The primary data used for this study was obtained from the TETFund Desk office (Bursary Dept.) and included a list of beneficiaries of AST&D from 2009-2018. Data was analyzed using percentage and Gender parity index (GPI). Result of analyses showed GPI values ranging from 0.29- 0.65<0.9, which indicate a marginal gender parity in AST&D TETFund access in favour of male staff. It is evidently clear that higher percentage of men than women accessed and utilized AST&D fund for masters and PhD programme and especially for non-science and technical courses. These findings correlate with available reports of low participation of women in Science and Technology disciplines. Also, very negligible number of female lecturers completed their higher education in foreign countries. It is therefore recommended that TETFund should map out strategy to increase women access to its intervention funds to meet the sustainable development goals of gender equity, in view of the tremendous role women education play in national development.

Introduction
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) was established as an interventionist’s
agency under the Education Tax Act No. 7 of 1993.TETFund (Establishment) Act 2011 repeals the
Education Tax Act Cap. E4 laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 and Education Tax Fund Act
No. 17, 2003. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund was charged with the responsibility for
managing, disbursing and monitoring the education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
TETFund has its corporate objective in the provision of fund for educational facilities and
infrastructural development, promotion of creative and innovative approach to educational
learning and service, stimulating, support and enhance improvement activities in the educational
foundation areas such as teacher education, teaching practice, library development, and special
education programmes, champion new literacy enhancing programmes that is scientific,
information and technological literacy.