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34 

FEMINIZATION OF THE TEACHING CORPS AND THE 

IMPLICATIONS FOR MUSIC EDUCATION IN NIGERIAN 

SCHOOLS: A STUDY OF SIX SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE 

(2007-2023) 
      

 

Mrs Uchenna Anekwe 

mrsucheanaekw@gmail.com 

Dr. Ikedimma Okeke 

in.okeke@unizik.edu 

Department of Music, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

 

Abstract 

This paper examined the unprecedented predominance of women in the teaching 

profession known as the ‘feminization of the teaching corps’ and how it has affected 

music over the span of sixteen years in primary and secondary schools of Anambra state, 

Nigeria. Six schools were studied which comprised of four primary and two secondary 

schools within Onitsha metropolis of Anambra state. Data was sourced through 

interviews, questionnaires, and participant observations by the authors as music teachers 

in the respective schools. Findings showed that the taking over of the teaching 

profession by women has affected music studies in schools adversely due to the 

complicated and physically demanding nature of music studies which cannot be handled 

effectively by only the women. Such areas of musicology as raising a school parade band, 

raising a school orchestra, and the teaching of physically demanding musical instruments 

such as the trumpet, trombone, tuba, etc., have seriously being diminished. The paper 

advocates that a situation of emergency be declared in schools regarding music in order 

to resuscitate music. Also incentives should be engaged by government and schools to 

make the teaching profession lucrative in order to attract and sustain male music 

teachers in schools. 

 

Introduction 

The need for a balance in the ratio of men and women in the teaching corps is pertinent 

towards a holistic and balanced education in schools. Music has suffered and survived 

the existential threat amid the so called subjects like English, mathematics, biology, etc. 

Music as a subject has also continued to strive for survival in a world that is scientifically 

and technologically driven. The clamour and glamour of the so called ‘professional courses’ 

such as medicine, nursing, pharmacy, engineering, computer science, Information 

technology, etc., have also driven music away, as it were, from the chart of trending 

courses and professions. The Nigerian society has also viewed music as an unserious and 

untoward subject of study and therefore has relegated it to the background for decades 

as no parent gets excited over their ward studying music in the university. The lifestyle 

mailto:mrsucheanaekw@gmail.com


 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

35 

of most popular musicians around the world has also dealt a detrimental blow on the 

recuperating image of music with the concomitant drug abuse, illicit sex, violence, 

gansterism and brigandage, decadent lyrics, pervasive music, and sexually suggestive 

dance moves, etc. 

When it appeared that music would survive these debilitating challenges, the problem of 

‘feminization of the teaching corps’ took over. The increasing number of male teachers 

dropping out of the teaching profession in schools has become a serious concern not only 

to the so called core subjects but also to music. The ratio of men to women in the primary 

and secondary schools has been found to be 1:10 and this is worrisome due to the loss of 

equilibrium in manpower distribution. 

 

Review of pertinent concepts 

 Feminization of the Teaching corps 

Feminization of the teaching corps refers to the predominance of the female folk in the 

teaching profession. This is evident in every school as male teachers have completely 

abandoned the teaching profession in pursuit of more lucrative jobs, ventures, and 

business. 

 Masculinization of the teaching corps 

This is the opposite of the other. This is the predominance of the teaching profession 

by the male folk. This concept is rarely observed now particularly with the growing 

pressure on men for better paying jobs around the world to shoulder responsibilities. 

 

Problem of study 

The ratio of women to men in the teaching corps of Anambra state primary school system 

has been found to be 10:1. This is problematic owing to the loss of the psychological 

balance and equilibrium that is achieved and sustained when the two genders are actively 

represented and distributed in the school workforce. The assurance and psychological 

balance pupils receive in a gender balanced school have been also lost. Certain subjects 

that are usually popular with the male teachers such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, 

further mathematics, health and physical education, and music have become jeopardized. 

Various extra curricula areas and trainings that require the attention of male teachers 

such as football, basketball, etc., have also become moribund in schools. Discipline in 

schools has now become problematic because pupils and students have found ways to 

resist the authority of female teachers. Music in schools has seriously suffered because 

of the predominance of the female folk. Some aspects of music training in schools are 

better handled by the men folk because of the high physical strength demanded such as 

band training, orchestra, and the playing of certain strenuous musical instruments such 

the trumpet, tuba, saxophone, bugle, drums, trombone, etc. 

 

Scholarly views on the issue of feminization of the teaching corps 



 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

36 

The issue of feminization of the teaching corps has attracted the interest of many 

scholars around the world with several contrasting views. Graffiths (2006) considers the 

effect of feminization on the practices of education a blessing and argues that: 

…concerns about increasing number of women teachers are misplaced… masculine 

practices have a hegemonic form while feminized practices have developed in resistance 

to these, and …hegemonic masculinity, not feminization, is the problem because it drives 

out diversity… the leaky, viscous practices of teaching would benefit from the increased 

diversity and decreased social stratification feminization brings to the profession(pg.1). 

 

Griffiths’ position is that the feminization of the teaching practice is not a problem but 

a good development which counters the problems created by the masculinization of the 

same corps. According to her ‘hegemonic masculinity is the problem because it drives out 

diversity.’ This position is salient in situations and educational environments where there 

still exist some male folks in teaching. Some parts of the world like Asia and Europe still 

have a commendable percentage of males in the teaching practice but presently in Africa, 

and in Nigeria our case study, the men have abandoned the teaching profession to the 

women in pursuit of better opportunities in business, trade, and other lucrative jobs. 

In a related study, Morgan (2023) worries that the disparity between female and male 

artists in the field of musical theatre is still in favour of men even till date. She even 

suggests that enough women have not been represented in the workforce around the 

world: 

 

Approximately sixty years after the women’s rights movement in America began that 

sparked debate on equal rights for women, especially in the workplace, there is still a 

distinguishable gap in the number of women in professional leadership in the theatre 

industry, and the number of men. There is also a distinguishable pay gap between the 

salaries of women and men. Some studies may link this to the time that the average 

woman takes away from work for caregiving (either children or otherwise) and others 

link this to the lack of opportunities for women to ascend to leadership throughout 

training as well as early levels of career(pg.1). 

 

The positon of the cited scholars above reveals a major underlying cause of the 

feminization of the teaching corps and that is the clamour for equity by women in a world 

dominated by men, as it were. Women in a bid for equity with men, have flooded the 

teaching corps and this has created a problem which this paper interrogates. It appears 

also that the men folk in a bid to strike a balance between the economic distress 

pervading the entire globe and the demands of survival, has abandoned the teaching field 

for women.  

 

Therefore, these two factors: the striving for equity by the female folk with the male 

folk and the pursuit of greener pastures by the men folk; appear to have reshaped the 

teaching corps particularly at the primary /secondary school levels being studied. 

 

The implications for music at the primary/secondary school levels 



 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

37 

Four primary schools( Ezechima primary school, Onitsha; United Primary school, Nkpor; 

Springfield Academy, Onitsha; and Mount Olive Primary school Onitsha) and two 

secondary schools(Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha; and Supreme Knowledge 

Comprehensive Schools , Nkpor) in Anambra state were sampled and studied within the 

span of fifteen years (2007-2023) with the researchers actively engaged in the schools 

as music teachers and researchers and the following results were found: 

 Very few schools offer music as a subject in the schools and the few that teach music 

are mostly private schools.  

 Public schools have serious difficulty in employing music teachers because of the dearth 

of qualified music teachers 

 The cost of maintaining a music program in the public schools is not sustainable because 

of the high cost of musical instruments and government’s unwillingness towards 

sponsorship 

 One of the public schools studied, United primary school Nkpor, has never had a music 

program since the inception of the school and the pupils were overwhelmed by the sight 

of piano-keyboard, harmonica, and recorders brought in to the school for the field work 

by the researchers. 

 The few private schools that teach within Onitsha metropolis such as supreme knowledge 

Comprehensive schools, Nkpor-Agu; Mount Olive school, G.R.A., Onitsha, and Springfield 

Academy, G.R.A., Onitsha have the major challenge of retaining the few male music 

teachers available in the midst of thronging female staff employed for other subject 

areas. 

 Between 2007 to date only very few male music teachers (Mr. kingdavid , Pst. Ikedi 

Okeke, and a few others) have been actively involved in music teaching in the primary and 

secondary schools within Onitsha metropolis with outstanding results. 

 Few active male music teachers cannot sustain the art in the entire metropolis. How much 

more the entire state?  

 The study revealed that amongst the numerous female teachers that applied for teaching 

in the schools studied only about 0.5% applied to teach music. 

 Few schools that managed to source for female music teachers encountered  the peculiar 

challenge of teaching and learning of musical instruments such as keyboard, drums, 

guitar, violin, recorder, flute, Oja, trumpet, saxophone, etc., because the female music 

teachers were only interested in singing which they felt more comfortable with. 

 Although the female music teachers performed well in classroom rudimentary music 

teaching, but after sometime the entire music program collapsed because theory alone 

does not sustain the musical art 

 The whole issue has resulted in serious difficulty in sustaining music in schools 

 

The Issue of Gender Stereotyping in musicology 

Gender Stereotyping- the association of particular conceptions to particular genders- 

exists in virtually all human endeavors with no exception to music. Gender stereotyping 

manifests in music with regards to musical roles such as who leads or plays what roles in 

a musical group, choice of musical instruments, voice parts, career opportunities, and 

superiority syndrome. Gender stereotype in music has its advantages and disadvantages, 

for instance, the female gender naturally takes up the vocal roles of soprano and alto. 



 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

38 

But one of the draw backs is manifest in choosing musical instruments where some 

instruments are tagged ‘female instruments’ while some others are tagged ‘male 

instruments’. In a related development, O’Neill and Boultona (2009) found in their study 

of the extent to which boys’ and girls’ preferences are based on the gender stereotyped 

associations that girls showed a significant stronger preference for piano, flute and violin 

than boys, whereas boys expressed a stronger preference for the guitar, drums and 

trumpet than girls. The study found further from the log-linear analyses that boys and 

girls have similar ideas about which instruments should be played by members of each 

sex.  

 

Okeke (2023:79) clarified the problem emanating from this gender stereotyping 

regarding musical instruments: “The finding that some Western orchestral musical 

instruments generate some gender bias places the responsibility on the instrumental 

teachers to disabuse the minds of the students from such notions as ‘feminine’ or 

‘masculine’ instruments”. 

 

In as much as the argument to regard and play all musical instruments without bias is 

tenable, however, there are still some issues regarding certain musical instruments and 

their suitability with the female folk with regards to their size, weight, technicalities of 

playing, and the demanding physical strength involved. Such instruments like the trumpet, 

cornet, saxophone, trombone, tuba, euphonium, etc., are physical too demanding for the 

female folks to easily adapt to.  This reality has heavily impacted on music studies in 

schools so much that music studies has been reduced to school assembly and class singing 

only. 

 

Present realities in schools  

School music studies in schools in Anambra state schools has been in a deplorable state 

despite concerted calls and efforts by scholars and stakeholders towards its 

resuscitation (Aninwene,2009; Ekwueme,2009; Mbanugo,2005; Okeke, 2023; 

Onyiuke,2005). 

 

Worrisome has been the encapsulation of music into Cultural and Creative Arts(CCA), 

which has given music a relegated status in schools. Most worrisome presently is the 

complete takeover of the teaching profession by the female folk technically referred to 

as the feminization of the teaching corps and which is the thrust of this paper. Music, 

being a special subject, is now taught by classroom teachers or any available teacher in 

schools. It was observed in the research that classroom teachers just read up the music 

curriculum as haphazardly embedded in the CCA curriculum and teach as they deem fit. 

The result is that the intricacies, nuances, and pertinent ramifications of musicology are 

completely lost. This does not happen in such subject areas as mathematics, English, and 

the sciences where qualified teachers are usually assigned to those areas.  

 



 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

39 

This has led to the bastardization of music education in schools and this accounts for 

the non-inclusion of music in most secondary school subjects and non- choice of music 

for university education amongst secondary school students. 

It was also discovered in the study that amongst the plethora of female teachers 

employed in the primary/secondary schools none or only about 0.01% studied music. Even 

when a female trained music teacher is found amongst the teeming population of female 

teachers, the difficulty of attending to the demands of practical music such as choral 

and instrumental music becomes a problem because most of them are averse to the 

energy and dynamism of practical music. 

 

Recommendations 

Based on the findings of this paper discussed from the forgoing, the following 

recommendations are proffered in order to break the hegemony of the feminization of 

the teaching corps which has created apparent problems for music studies in schools. 

The imprisoned status of music under Cultural and creative arts should be broken in order 

to give music an independent status. Music studies should be made attractive in schools 

and in the society by music educators, musicologists, and policy makers in education so 

that more enrollment for music because encouraged. Music units and departments in 

schools and universities should be properly equipped with gadgets, teaching aids for 

music, and musical instruments to capture the realities of a sustainable music program. 

The teaching profession should be generally made lucrative by the government, as a 

matter of urgency, in order to curb the abandonment of the profession for better paid 

ventures amongst male teachers. 

 

Conclusion 

The problem of the feminization of the teaching corps as it affects music education in 

primary and secondary schools of Anambra state has been captured in this paper with 

the idea of finding solution to the problem. The teaching ratio of women to men in 

Anambra state primary/secondary school system was found to be lopsided to the scale 

of 10:1 and this ratio portends grave dangers for the survival of music studies in schools. 

Several aspects of music that require the peculiar attention of male teachers such as 

the teaching of some physically demanding musical instruments like the trumpet, 

trombone, tuba, percussions, etc., and raising an orchestra, school band, and parade band 

have been found to be adversely affected. The situation has continued to worsen as a 

result of non and very low subscription of male teachers to teaching owing to the global 

economic downturn and Nigeria’s peculiar economic challenges which have forced the men 

folk into several pursuits for greener pastures. 

 

It was suggested that music educators, musicologists and policy makers in education 

should work conscientiously towards making music an attractive subject of studies in 

schools even from the kindergarten so that young learners can discover the numerous 

benefits of music education. This can be achieved by extricating music from the bundle 

of Cultural and creative Arts(CCA) so that music can exist as an independent subject. 

Music departments in schools should be adequately equipped with man power and 



 

 
  

Awka Journal of Research in Music and the Arts (AJRMA) Vol. 16, September 2023 

40 

paraphernalia for competent music studies. Generally, the teaching corps should be made 

lucrative to attract potential male teachers in to the system. 

 

                          

References 

Aninwene, E.O. (2009). The state and future of music education in primary  schools in  

Nigeria: A case for teacher preparation. Interlink: A Journal of  Research 

in Music, 4, pp. 48-62.  

Ekwueme, L.U. (2009). Competency based teacher in music/cultural and creative 

 Art: A suggested approach for the Universal Basic Education (UBE)  Program.  

 Interlink: A Journal of Research in Music, 4, pp. 33-47)  

Griffiths, M (2006). The feminization of teaching and the practice of teaching: 

 threat or opportunity. 

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227936848 

Mbanugo, C.E. (2005). Songs children sing: An ethnography of an Igbo (Nigerian) 

 primary school recess. Interlink: A Journal of Research in Music,2, pp.95 - 111  

Morgan, A.W.(ed.) (2023). Conversations with women in musical theater 

 leadership. London: Taylor & Francis Group. 

Okeke, I.N. (2023). Problems and Prospects Associated with the Teaching  

and Learning of Western Orchestral Musical Instruments: The  Nnamdi     

Azikiwe University Experience. Published PhD Dissertation. 

          https://www.nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/TD/article/view/3567 

Okeke, I.N. (2023).  Towards the Resuscitation of Music  

  Education in Anambra state Primary Schools: A Pedagogical study of five   

 schools in Onitsha metropolis. Published MA Thesis. 

        https://www.nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/TD/article/view/3566 

O’Neill, S. A. & Boultona, M. J. (1996). Boys’ and Girls’ Preferences for Musical 

Instruments: A Function of Gender? Psychology of Music, vol. 24. UK: 

Staffordshire. 

Onyiuke, Y. S. (2005). Toward improving childhood music education for Nigeria: A case 

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227936848
https://www.nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/TD/article/view/3567
https://www.nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/TD/article/view/3566

