Exploring how institutionalized patriarchy relates to career outcomes among African women: evidence from Nigeria

Purpose

Following the renewed interest to harness the full potential of African female employees in the workplace, this paper aims to explore how patriarchal behaviors relate to career adaptability, subjective career success and job satisfaction among women in Nigerian organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

A structured questionnaire was used in collecting quantitative data from 508 middle-level managers in Nigerian organizations. The hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling.

Findings

Patriarchal-induced gendered work practices were found to have a significant negative influence on career adaptability among Nigerian career women. Contrary to expectations, patriarchal discrimination was found to have an insignificant negative influence on job satisfaction and subjective career success, suggesting that Nigerian career women still experience significant subjective career success and job satisfaction amid patriarchal practices in the workplace.

Practical implications

For female employees to possess significant career adaptability resources that will enable them to reconstruct their careers to match redesigned job functions in times of innovation in the workplace, organizations should reinvent their human resources (HR) policies that address patriarchal-induced gendered work practices in the workplace.

Originality/value

This current study extends research on how patriarchy affects female employees in African organizations from the traditional research focus of patriarchy and work-life balance relationships to the under-explored area of career experience among women. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative research that explores how patriarchy influences career adaptability resources, subjective career success and job satisfaction among Nigerian female employees.