Abstract
Women’ career progression in Nigerian banking is still hampered by several challenges which impinge on their professional advancement. Despite the prescription that all sectors in Nigeria must have a gender policy in line with the National Gender Policy (NGP), little research has been done to determine whether there is a gender policy in the Nigerian banking sector as well as ascertain its implementation in the Nigerian banking industry and how it affects career progression for women. The main focus of the study was therefore to determine if there is a gender policy in the Nigerian banking sector, its rate of implementation and its attendant impact on women’s career progression within the banks. Liberal feminist and Glass Ceiling theories provided the framework while cross–sectional survey design was utilised. Purposive and total enumeration techniques were used to select the permanent staff of six banks with six branches in Abeokuta and six branches in Ijebu Ode respectively based on older and newer generation banks. 322 employees consisting of 158 females and 164 males took part in the quantitative survey while 22 in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with management and senior union officials at the bank's Head Offices for the qualitative component. The majority (65.5%) knew of policy existence, while 51.6% had low awareness of the implementation of gender policy. However, 38.8% revealed that gender policy had been implemented in their branches and had a positive effect on opportunities for women career progression, whereas the aspiration level of women bankers to management positions was reported to be high (72.7%). Keywords: : National gender policy, women career progression, banking, policy implementation

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