The Challenges of Women Participation in Political Leadership and its Impact on Socioeconomic Development in Delta State

ABSTRACT: Women in Delta State have remained underrepresented in elected and party leadership roles despite constitutional guarantees and international commitments to gender equality. By 2024 no woman had served as governor or senator in Delta State, and women held only 12.1% of local council seats. These figures contrasted sharply with legal provisions, including Nigeria’s adherence to the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and the Maputo Protocol. This paper therefore addressed a serious gap by moving beyond national aggregates to focusing on state-level dynamics on women political participation in leadership and its impact on development in Delta State. Drawing on liberal feminist theories, the paper examined the extent of women’s engagement in electoral and party politics, the impact of that engagement on perceptions of leadership and its outcomes for development. In doing so, the study provided both empirical documentation through indepth interviews and theoretical refinement that has received little focus from previous scholarly works. This paper showed that women’s participation in leadership was uniformly low across all dimensions of political engagement in Delta State. It was found that where women did engage in leadership, they tend to be more responsive to community needs and more attentive to vulnerable groups. It was argued that prevailing gender norms, party gatekeeping, financial constraints, election-related intimidation and weak mentorship networks are barriers to women’s participation in political leadership in Delta State. This paper therefore suggested coordinated reforms in political parties’ candidates’ selection, campaign financing, election security and mentorship programmes to transform women’s political participation.