Women and Girls' Empowerment and Education

In the beginning of 2013, President Joyce Banda challenged professional women in Malawi to mentor young girls and women in leadership. This empowering partnership was intended to encourage women to seek roles in leadership throughout their lives. President Banda claims that women are not truly leaders if they are not mentoring, inspiring, and preparing other women for the responsibilities that follow leadership. She hopes that women in leadership positions will move into the future together and ensure opportunities for women.

Following this request, the United Nations published findings that add weight to this desire to afford women space to effectively participate in society and to have leadership within their communities. According to the 2013 Human Development Report compiled by the United Nations Development Programme, Malawi ranks 124^th in gender inequality, an index based on three main factors: reproductive health, empowerment, and labor force. To break down some of these figures, women in Malawi comprise 22.3 percent of seats in their Parliament and the percentage of women with secondary education is 10.4 percent, while the percentage of males with secondary education is almost double that of women, at 20.4 percent.

Despite these statistics, it seems as though the women of Karonga, in the northern region of Malawi, have taken Banda’s plea to heart and are working to create a safer environment for girls and women. The lobbyist group Karonga Women’s Forum launched a campaign to promote the end of violence against women that has plagued the lakeshore district. Joyce Nyondo, the Forum’s Coordinator, says the organization wants to empower women to break the culture of silence, understand their rights, and uplift their social status within society in the process.

This campaign in Karonga specifically urges women to report all cases of abuse to authorities and other rights oriented institutions. Nyondo explains that, “violence does not only affect women but also the social-economic development of their own households and that of the country as a whole.”(Nyasa Times)

The Karonga District has also received praised for another initiative that encourages female enrollment within school systems. The Forum for African Women Educationalist in Malawi’s (FAWEMA) initiative is known as Gender Responsive Pedagogy. This initiative was created in 2009 to promote gender equity and more specifically, equality in school system by promoting related legislation and opportunities for girls to thrive within the educational sector.

Since the start of this project, education and government officials alike, have noticed the increase in female enrollment and their success rates in school have been significantly improving. Classes are registering more girls that boys and in the past year, and girls have filled the top five spots for Standard Eight students within the district.

In response to this initiative, women groups have been created in Karonga to sensitize the community to the benefits of educating girls and while there had been some initial resistance, members of these communities have begun to embrace the importance of educating girls as well as boys. In fact, 75 percent of night students in Karonga are married women who have felt empowered to education themselves.(Nyasa Times)