Strategies employed by Nigeria’s structural adjustment programme (SAP), launched in 1986, are generally growth and profit oriented instead of people and need oriented. As a result, although statistics may show an overall improvement of the economy, the benefits are usually unequally distributed by class and sex. The present article examines how the SAP has affected women in Nigeria, in particular women’s employment, agricultural food production and access to credit facilities. It finds that women’s employment opportunities have worsened. Women’s access to land, capital, technological improvements and training has been reduced and there has been a crisis in food production as a result. Women’s ability to attract credit facilities has been further weakened. The activities in which women are mostly engaged, food production and petty trading, do not attract bank loans, even less so given the high lending rates introduced by the SAP. The low incomes earned by the majority of women preclude saving, and this means that the deregulated interest rates of the SAP, intended to encourage saving, are of no direct benefit to women either. Bibliogr., sum.
