Evaluation of Socio-Economic and Cultural Characteristics of Gender Involvement in Urban Informal Housing Development: A Case Of Southwestern Nigeria

The informal housing is most prevalent around the world as more population lives in settlements that are unplanned with poor conditions. This study evaluated the socio-economic characteristics of gender (male and female) in relation to urban informal housing development in South-western Nigeria. The cross-sectional survey design was adopted while multi-stage sampling technique was used. All the localities in each state capital of South-western Nigeria were identified and three localities were randomly selected. A structured questionnaire focusing on socio-economic characteristics (sex, age, income) and involvement in housing development was administered to the household-head in the selected residential buildings. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, One-way Analysis of Variance and Chi-Square at p≤0.05 while qualitative data were content analysed. The ages of respondents were 34.46±10.23 (male) and 37±3 (female) years respectively. Males constituted 72.8% of respondents. Building construction ration between the genders (male: female) in Ado-Ekiti (75.0%:25.0%); Abeokuta (100.0%:0.0%); Akure (93.8%:6.2%); Ikeja (94.6%:5.4%); Ibadan (78.6%:21.4%); Osogbo (80.0%:20.0%). There were significant differences between male and female involvement in land procurement (χ² =130.507) and housing construction (χ²=53.019) while building design and approval (χ²=115.893), housing finance provision (χ²=51.031) and building materials acquisition (χ²=27.873) were otherwise. Men participated more in informal urban housing development processes in south-western Nigeria. The study depicted that socio–economic characteristics of respondents were the determinant factors of their involvement in urban informal housing development.