GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN NIGERIA'S PLASTIC WASTE GOVERNANCE: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION

Nigeria’s escalating plastic waste crisis poses severe environmental, public-health, and socioeconomic risks. Women occupy a substantial yet overlooked position within this matrix, managing household waste and participating in informal waste recovery. However, Nigeria’s plastic waste governance framework remains formally gender-neutral, reproducing institutional inequalities by concentrating women in precarious, hazardous operational roles while excluding them from decision-making, policy formulation, and resource allocation. This study examines whether Nigeria’s legal, policy, and institutional frameworks mainstream gender to secure women’s substantive participation throughout the plastic waste governance cycle. Utilising a qualitative doctrinal and conceptual research design, the study evaluates relevant statutory enactments, subsidiary regulations, national policies, and institutional mandates including the National Gender Policy 2021–2026 against five evaluative indicators: legal recognition, representation, consequential consultation, access to resources and protection, and accountable institutional oversight. The analysis reveals a profound structural disconnect: while Nigeria’s environmental instruments advance circular-economy principles, recycling, and extended producer responsibility, they treat waste actors as gender-neutral categories, failing to establish enforceable gender-responsive duties, minimum representation thresholds, or targeted consultations. Furthermore, institutional fragmentation between environmental bodies and women’s affairs ministries, alongside the absence of gender-disaggregated data, leaves accountability unanchored. The study recommends establishing mandatory gender-mainstreaming obligations in waste instruments, statutory representation quotas, formal legal recognition and social protection for informal waste pickers, gender-responsive budgeting, and joint institutional oversight. Ultimately, achieving sustainable plastic waste governance requires transforming women’s legal status from vulnerable operational workers to protected, resourced, and authoritative decision-makers. Keywords: Gender Mainstreaming, Plastic Waste Governance, Women’s Substantive Participation, Informal Waste Economy, Environmental Law and Policy, Nigeria.