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In an effort to address the systemic problem of gender imbalance in academic leadership, fifteen universities in Nigeria have established gender centres and adopted institutional gender policies. With these formal equity measures in place, it is assumed that women can easily progress to academic leadership; however, this has not been the case. Using interview data gathered from two purposively selected universities in Nigeria; this paper unveils the perspectives of policy stakeholders on the ‘informal rules of the game’. The gender policy stakeholders constitute selected individuals responsible for providing the context and environment for formulating and implementing the gender policy; as such, it is imperative to consider the influence this structure exerts. Informed by Feminist Institutionalism (FI), the analysis was the extent to which gender norms and practices, embodied in informal rules and institutional legacies, challenge the intent of gender equity policies. Findings revealed two major discourses: the nestedness of informal selection in the gender policy formulation process and the gendered logic of appropriateness in gender policy implementation. This paper, therefore, contributes to the FI literature, providing a broader understanding of how the subversion of formalised policies limits the prospect for a positive institutional gender change and undermines women’s academic leadership progression.

For the past three decades, discussions centred on gender equity have become buzzwords in academic institutions in Nigeria, which has led to an increasing effort to establish gender centres and adopt equity policies. Despite the awareness and presence of gender centres in Nigerian universities, institutionalising gender equity has been challenging. There is a struggle to explain how policy absence and gender centre mergers may constrain positive institutional gender change. This article explores why academic institutions have established gender centres but have not created gender policies. Taking into account the gender stakeholder’s perspectives in two purposively selected universities in Nigeria, this study utilises an integrated feminist approach to investigate why university gender centres are unable to advance gender equity within the institutions. Concepts like institutional resistance and layering offered tools that helped capture the dynamics of institutional change and stasis in the case studies. Findings showed that the existence of gender centres without formalised policies is a window-dressing approach that limits the potential for gender equity within the universities. It also revealed how the redirection of gender centres through mergers with other centres is ‘gendered’. Evidence showed that the prospect for institutional gender change is often tempered by merging incompatible and non-complementary centres. This study, thus, adds to the scholarly literature on institutional resistance, providing valuable insights into the subtle manifestations of resistance towards gender equity institutionalisation in academia.

This position paper highlights a new methodological orientation for institutional gender analysis. Drawing on Feminist Institutionalism and relevant feminist approaches, this research proposes a Feminist Institutionalism-Integrated Methodology (FIIM), which can be utilised as a ‘two-level’ analytical framework: a first-level analysis to analyse formal institutions and a second-level analysis to analyse informal institutions. This research note discusses the value of FIIM for understanding the role of formal and informal institutional arrangements in women’s progression to academic leadership and the institutionalisation of gender equity in Nigerian Universities. I argue that the combined insights from the FIIM analytical approach advance existing work on gender equity policies and institutional change. Utilising FIIM for this study revealed a great deal about how dynamics of unequal power relations and resistance to gender equity play out formally and informally within universities. FIIM, therefore, offers a valuable means to analytically assess the state of play of gender relations in formal and informal institutions