Married women face challenges in universities

Findings at Bayero University Kano (BUK) reveal that married female students face a number of challenges while pursuing undergraduate degrees. Apart from domestic and university challenges, student-mothers are also said to be facing challenges with their spouses and in parenting. One student said the difficulties faced in studying and parenting had made a sizeable number […]

Findings at Bayero University Kano (BUK) reveal that married female students face a number of challenges while pursuing undergraduate degrees.

Apart from domestic and university challenges, student-mothers are also said to be facing challenges with their spouses and in parenting.

One student said the difficulties faced in studying and parenting had made a sizeable number of married women to drop out of higher education. The difficulties are further complicated if a woman is pregnant or has children under her care.

Asmau Iliyasu, a student-mother at the Department of Mass Communication, said she finds it difficult balancing her study time with parenting, adding that both tasks are demanding.  

 “I am presently experiencing challenges with my study time. I often wake up very early in the morning  to get everything done at home before going to lectures. This leaves me tired and not very alert in class,” she said.

She said her academic performance has dropped. “You see, before I got married, my exam results were very good but after my marriage I could not make it like before. I cannot read at home because of my marital responsibilities and this really affects my performance, sometimes I just use some intervals between lectures to read at school and that is not enough.”  

On her new born child, Asmau said “Another problem is that my baby cries a lot. Sometimes I have to go out of class to breastfeed him and some lecturers may even send me out because of that, and this really affects my study to the extent that I lose tests, attendance and so on.”

Another female married student who spoke on condition of anonymity said she is presently pregnant and doesn’t do well during classes and assignments.

 “I am facing a great challenge at home. My husband sometimes could not understand the situation. At times I even miss lectures due to some reasons which are partly from my husband.”

Mal. Abubakar S. Minjibir, a senior lecturer with the Department of Mass Communication  said he see no much difference between female married students and others as everything depended on proper planning and arrangement of activities. 

“I don’t think there is any much difference between married women and the others. Over the years I have seen different students who are married and they graduated with good results. They need to plan well,” he noted.

El-Yakub is of Mass Comm Dept, BUK