It is one of the great scandals of our time.
Women do the same work as men, often under the same lights, the same pressure, the same sacrifice yet they are paid less. Across boardrooms and ministries, classrooms and film sets, the story repeats itself with brutal consistency. This is not a glitch in the system,it is the system. It is not that women earn less, it is that society insists on paying them less.
Nigeria’s sports arena, where effort is most visible. The Super Falcons, 10-time African champions, have lifted this country’s name higher than the Super Eagles in the last two decades. Yet while the men fly in chartered planes, secure hefty bonuses, and enjoy lucrative endorsements, the Falcons have at times boycotted training and even refused to leave hotels in protest of unpaid wages not until they were recently celebrated.
Women who bring glory to the nation being forced to beg for the pay that is rightfully theirs.
In Nollywood, the second-largest film industry in the world the inequality is just as glaring. Actresses who carry blockbuster films, whose faces pull millions to cinema halls, often receive fractions of what their male colleagues earn. Endorsement deals skew heavily toward men, and production budgets frequently allocate higher pay to male leads, even when women are the true commercial draw. It is the Jennifer Lawrence story retold in Lagos, Asaba, and Abuja.
Academia, the self-proclaimed temple of enlightenment, has not fared better. Women make up a large portion of Nigeria’s university teaching staff, yet very few ever make it to the professorial chair. Promotions stall, opportunities for research funding tilt toward men, and even where salary scales are supposedly fixed, men dominate the senior, better-paid ranks. The message is clear, the higher you climb, the steeper the gendered cliffs become.
Politics too carries its own insult. Women who contest elections are told they lack structure, a euphemism for exclusion from the networks of money and influence that sustain Nigerian politics. Even when appointed, women are often placed in so-called soft ministries women’s affairs, social welfare while men corner the heavyweights, finance, defense, petroleum. The pay differentials between political appointments mirror these hierarchies, reminding women that their labor, even in service to the nation, is seen as supplementary, not central.
Beyond the obvious disparities, the inequity plays out in sharper contrasts when you look closer. In world football, Cristiano Ronaldo pockets over $200 million a year, while the best-paid women’s players, like Ada Hegerberg or Alex Morgan, make less than Ã
$500,000 annually from club contracts. The difference is not talent, it is visibility, sponsorship, and the unwillingness of institutions to invest equally. Endorsement deals follow the same bias.Nike pours hundreds of millions into male athletes while even icons like Serena Williams or Nigeria’s Super Falcons struggle for a fraction of that recognition.
The injustice deepens with life choices. Globally and locally, women face a motherhood penalty, losing up to half their earnings within five years of childbirth, while men enjoy a fatherhood bonus seen as more stable or responsible. In Nigeria’s universities, banks, and ministries, this bias quietly stalls women’s promotions. Even in professions dominated by women teaching, nursing men who enter often ride a glass escalator to leadership, leaving their female colleagues stuck below.
Our cultural industries tell the same story. Nollywood actresses like Genevieve Nnaji or Funke Akindele, and musicians like Tiwa Savage, pull massive audiences and revenue, yet male counterparts command higher fees and endorsement deals. Politics reinforces it,women hold less than 6% of seats in the National Assembly, compared to Rwanda’s 61%. With so few women shaping policy, pay equity remains a polite aspiration rather than a binding law.
The price is not just personal, it is national. The World Bank estimates that closing gender pay gaps would add billions to Nigeria’s GDP. Every naira denied to women is not only theft from their wallets, but also theft from the economy itself.
And in the everyday workplace, where millions of Nigerian women toil, the inequity is quieter but no less brutal. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, women in Nigeria earn on average 20 to 30 percent less than men for the same work. In banking, men dominate executive roles with fatter paychecks, while women, who form much of the workforce, remain concentrated at lower tiers. In offices across Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, women negotiate salaries already cut short by an invisible penalty, the unspoken belief that their work is worth less.
Globally, the same story repeats,whether it is Hollywood actresses fighting for profit shares, women in Silicon Valley suing for equal pay, or female athletes demanding bonuses equal to men. But in Nigeria, where poverty is feminized and women are often both breadwinners and caregivers, the theft is crueler. Every naira stolen through pay disparity widens the cracks in already fragile households, starving children of opportunity and communities of progress.
The excuses are tired. We are told it is about market value, as though markets are neutral. We are told it is about choice, as if women voluntarily chose undervaluation. We are told it is about performance, as if trophies, box office numbers, and academic citations did not already prove otherwise. The truth is simpler and harder, women are paid less because we still value them less.
Every pay gap is a message. To the female athlete, it says her endurance is not worth as much as a man’s. To the Nollywood actress, it says her star power is expendable. To the female lecturer, it says her intellect is less valuable. To the woman who holds her family together while working two jobs, it says her sacrifice is invisible. And when half of humanity is told it is worth less, we all lose. Because innovation, justice, and progress cannot flourish on a tilted field.
The question is no longer why do women earn less? We know the reasons, structural bias, discriminatory hiring, lack of transparency, the penalties of motherhood, and centuries of entrenched patriarchy. The real question is, why do we still tolerate it? Why does Nigeria allow theft in plain sight, year after year, with polite murmurs instead of urgent reforms?
The solutions are not mysteries. Equal work must mean equal pay. Companies must publish transparent salary bands. Governments must enforce pay equity laws with real consequences. Policies must protect caregivers – both men and women – so parenthood is not a professional death sentence. And above all, culture must shift. We must strip away the narrative that tells women to be grateful for less.
This is not a fight for women alone. It is a fight for fairness, for the integrity of work, for the dignity of human effort. Until Nigerian women are paid what they deserve, every paycheck signed, every prize awarded, every contract negotiated carries the stain of inequality.
The theft must end. Equal work. Equal pay. Nothing less.
The post Equal work, unequal pay, the theft we still tolerate, by Stephanie Shaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.
