Gender, Economic Policy, and Domestic Energy Use in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines the gender impacts of the results of government policies with regard to the prices of petroleum products, by tracing the effects of economic policy beyond the traditional economic domain. Low- and middle-income households in the highly populated city of Ibadan were studied using quantitative and qualitative techniques of data collection and analysis. The results show that upward review of the prices of petroleum products, especially kerosene and cooking gas, in the past decades have influenced the pattern of domestic energy consumption and impacted Oil social relations within households in ways that are not taken into consideration by policy makers.