IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 19, Issue 10, Ver. II (Oct. 2014), PP 69-81 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org www.iosrjournals.org 69 | Page Social Welfare Analysis of Gender Inequality in Education and Employment: Ranking Gender Inequality in Rural and Urban Nigeria with Generalized Lorenz Curves 1 Ikechukwu, A. M., 2 Edeme, K. Richardson (PhD), 3 Azu, Benedict 1 Department of Economics University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria. 2 Department of Economics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria. 3 Department of Economics College of Education, Agbor, Delta state, Nigeria Abstract: This study analyzes the social welfare effect of gender inequality in human capital development (education and employment) across rural and urban Nigeria. Using Nigeria most recent data set on labour force survey by NBS, which captures labour force participation by gender, gender unemployment by educational level and sector, gender schooling ratio, gender population growth rate and economic active participation by gender this study investigated how differently, gender inequality in education and employment affects women across rural and urban regions. To unravel this, we adopted Shorrock and Alkinson Generalized Lorenz approach to welfare dominance and inequality decomposition. We ranked gender inequality on education and employment by rural and urban. The major finding is that female unemployment by educational level is predominant in the urban sectors compared to the rural sectors. Other findings are that gender inequality is higher in labour force participation when compared with education in Nigeria. We therefore recommend that for Nigeria steady economic growth to translate positively to socio-economic of her citizens, the war against gender inequality should go beyond sectoral or zone, it should be generally pursued. Also for the goals of the Transformation Agenda to be fully realised, the current situation of women must be factored into policy formulation and implementation. Key word: Gender inequality, Human capital, and sectoral dominance (Rural and Urban). I. Introduction Despite the global campaign for women empowerment and gender equity, women in Nigeria still form an underclass and lack equality of opportunity, both in the contributions they make to development and the benefits they receive from it. The disparities in gender are significant. The country is ranked 79 out of 86 in the OECD‟s 2012 Social Institutions and Gender Index and 120 out of 135 countries in the World Economic Forum‟s 2011 Global Gender Gap Index. This is true of all women in Nigeria, though education, class, ethnicity, kinship, marital status and religion play a role in mitigating or elaborating this effect. The geographical division between the North, mainly Muslim, and the South, predominantly but not exclusively Christian, is also an important dimension of the struggle for gender equality (Edozie, 2007). The religious dimension has become more prominent since 1999, when political liberalisation allowed a greater degree of freedom of worship (British Council Nigeria (BCN, 2012)). Like much of Africa countries, quality of life tends to be better in urban communities in Nigeria, owing in part to lack of investment in rural infrastructure and services. There is also a North-South divide between urban centres, because those in the industrial South tend to offer better conditions than those in the North. Within both North and South, State capitals tend to have better conditions than smaller towns in their regions. Therefore, there are many reasons to be concerned about existing gender inequalities in Nigeria, especially in the major well-being related dimensions such as education, health, employment, or earnings. From the growth as well as equity perspective, such gender inequalities are problematic as they lower well-being and are form of injustice in most conceptions of equity and justice. While such a view would argue for reducing gender inequalities in these dimensions of well-being on intrinsic grounds, recent literature has argued on the instrumental effects of gender inequality on other important development outcomes with a particular focus on economic growth processes (Stephan and Francesca, 2010). Without denying the importance of reducing gender inequality on intrinsic grounds, this study will contribution to that latter literature by examining the welfare incidence of gender inequality in education and employment across rural and urban sectors of Nigeria. Gender inequality in well-being manifests itself in many forms. Empirical evidence shows that men earns more income than women, and women have less access to assets such as land, natural resources and other physical assets, education, technology and credit in developing countries, especially Nigeria. They also experience an unequal “burden”, i.e. a higher workload, although the major part of this workload is invisible in