Abstract

This article aims to examine the relations between gender and students’ stated housing preferences in Nigerian public universities using empirical analysis. Based on a sampled population of 480 respondents, the analysis revealed that gender was statistically significant for five of the eleven housing preference variables examined. The sampled population consisted of 46.7 percent female and 51.7 percent male students, while 1.5 percent did not respond. Most of the respondents were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five years. Most were unmarried, with only 3 percent of the respondents married. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (crosstabs, chi-square). This study found that gender is only statistically significant with preference for where to live (0.000), willingness to pay for preferred accommodation (0.027), present cost of preferred accommodation (0.002), whom to a share bedroom with (.000), and maximum number of floors their resident halls should have (0.05), and there may be more than gender to influence students’ preferences for housing. Indications of the influence of students’ socioeconomic backgrounds (age, financial status, and household family size) on preferences also emerged. The study found that both genders are sensitive to the distance of their housing to other campus facilities and are very sensitive to privacy.