Higher Education and Gender Representation in the Fields of Music and Mass Communication: Focus on Some Nigerian Universities

The triad of education, music, and the media are inevitable in society because of the significant space they occupy in its development and smooth running. Education liberates, just as music and the media, among other functions, inform, educate, and entertain. However, does society present a level-playing ground for the female gender to acquire higher education in the fields of music and mass communication? Does it avail the females who have attained higher education in these fields the opportunity to contribute their quotas to society`s development? These are the posers this paper intended to resolve. It studied what is tenable at the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Benin City, Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka, and University of Africa (UAT), Toru-Orua. Its objectives were to determine the male and female ratio of students and staff in the departments of Mass Communication and Music (Theatre Arts) in the selected universities; ascertain the fraction of the male and female staff that are academic and non-academic staff; and investigate the quotient of the male and female staff that are Senior lecturers (academic staff), or are in the high management cadre (non-academic staff). The paper, hinged on the Social Structure and Anomie theory, employed a survey research design. The outcomes of the study were that the three universities have more female students than male students studying music and mass communication. It was also found that there are more male academic staff than female academic staff, both at the senior and junior levels, while there are more female non-academic staff than male non-academic staff both at the senior and junior cadres. It was therefore recommended that the girl-child should be encouraged to pursue education to higher levels, beyond primary and secondary schools; that more women should aspire to venture into the academia where they can inspire and mentor more females to emulate them, and that females in the academe should be given their rightful places, as per promotion and in the occupation of offices in the high echelon.