Gender inequality is a ban on the economic development and human development of countries in general and Nigeria in particular, especially in work environments. This study examined the effect of gender inequality on the performance of female employees in selected health institutions in Ogun State. A descriptive research design was adopted for this study, and employees of two selected health institutions in Ogun State constituted the population and sample frame. Taro Yamane formula was employed to determine the sample size for this study (400), and a simple random sampling technique was employed to select the sample. A self-designed questionnaire was used as the research instrument. The collected data was analysed using descriptive statistics (percentage and frequency), and inferential statistics (multiple regressions) were employed to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 significance level. The analysis showed no significant relationship between gender discrimination in recruitment and employee performance (with a Beta = − 0.031 and ρ = 0.876).