Promoting Gender Equity in Education in Malawi

For decades, the image of young girls walking to school has carried a strong sense of educational progress. In Malawi, this reality is becoming more tangible, as more girls are now entering school. The country has expanded access to education, particularly at the primary level, where gender parity is nearly achieved. However, as learners transition to secondary school, the gender gaps widen: fewer girls enroll in secondary school, and even fewer complete it. At the secondary school level, the gender parity index drops to 0.93, and only about 20.6% of girls finish secondary school, compared to 24% of boys (Government of Malawi, 2024).

The question is, why does this happen, and what can be done?

Early marriage, poverty, long distances to school, household responsibilities, and gender-based violence continue to act as barriers to girls’ education. These challenges often reinforce one another; girls from poor households may be pushed into marriage as a survival strategy while long and unsafe routes to school increase their risk of absenteeism and violence. Many girls also carry a heavy domestic workload, limit their study time, and experience irregular attendance and poor performance. Together, these pressures make it harder for girls to stay in school and complete their education.

Yet despite these persistent barriers, several interventions in Malawi are showing promising results in supporting girls’ learning and keeping them in school.

What is working to promote gender equity?

1.   Supportive Legislative and policy reforms

Malawi has several policies to support equitable access to education, even though implementation remains inconsistent:

• Free primary education (FPE), where tuition fees were eliminated, boosted enrollment, especially for girls from poor households.
• The school readmission policy provides for the right of teenage mothers to return to school.
• The National Girls Education Strategy focuses on menstrual hygiene, prevention of gender-based violence, and girls’ participation across educational levels.
• The Malawi Partnership Compact (2023-2027) emphasizes equitable foundational learning and coordinated financing to scale interventions, including hostels, school feeding, and scholarships for girls.

2.   Financial and economic incentives

Scholarships and cash transfers, both conditional and unconditional, are effective in improving girls’ enrollment, attendance, and learning outcomes. Girls in Malawi who receive monthly stipends develop higher academic aspirations and experience improved well-being. Scholarship recipients recorded 94-100% graduation rates compared to 19-50% among non–recipients. Such financial and economic incentives do more than just pay fees: they reduce families’ reliance on child labour or early marriage as economic strategies, allowing girls to focus on their studies. The benefits even extend beyond education, improving girls’ health and emotional well-being.

3.   Structural and pedagogical interventions

Creating safe, supportive school environments is also essential:

• The existence of female teachers in a school is associated with higher retention and better academic outcomes for girls. Female teachers can play a key role in providing mentorship to girls and reducing school-based violence, including harassment, bullying, and sexual exploitation, thereby providing a safe space for girls.
• Menstrual Hygiene Management(MHM): Girls’ attendance to school increases significantly when the institutions provide sanitary pads and girl-friendly, hygienic facilities, such as toilets. For example, Umodzi Youth organization recorded a 113% increase in girls’ enrollment after improving MHM facilities and conducting community sensitization.
• Gender-responsive pedagogy: Classrooms that use inclusive teaching approaches help challenge gender stereotypes, encourage girls’ participation, and address gender-based violence. Examples of inclusive teaching include using gender-neutral language and grouping learners in mixed-gender teams. This approach allows teachers to identify and respond to biased classroom practices.

Despite the progress and promising interventions, critical gaps still exist, limiting the full realization of gender equity in education:

1. Implementation gaps

Policies may exist, but many schools lack the resources, training, and community support to enforce them. For example, the readmission policy has been affected by resource constraints, in which teenage mothers often return to school without the child care, transport, or financial assistance they need to remain in school, leading to them dropping out.

2. Overburdened schools

Free education has increased enrollment but strained classrooms. High pupil–teacher ratios, inadequate infrastructure, and limited learning materials reduce the quality of education.

3. Neglect of Intersectionality

Girls with disabilities from poor households or in remote rural areas remain underserved. Interventions often generalize girls and overlook the compounded disadvantages girls face.

What’s the way forward?

To advance gender equity in education, Malawi must shift to holistic and evidence-driven action: 

• Scaling up cash transfers, scholarships, and school feeding while combining them with mentorship and psychosocial support to create a comprehensive safety net.
•    Strengthening the implementation of key policies, such as the school readmission policy.
• Focusing on both access and quality: Getting girls into school is the first step; they must also learn in safe, well-resourced environments. Access without quality leaves girls in school but not learning, while quality without access excludes those who need education the most. This means investing in foundational learning, strengthening teacher training, and reducing class sizes to ensure that being in school translates into actual learning. Malawi needs to pursue both to achieve gender equity in education
• Addressing intersectionality by targeting support to girls with disabilities and those in ultra-poor households. There is a need to collect better data to better understand and address intersectionality, ensuring no one is left behind.
• Adopting a gender equity approach requires engaging not only girls but also the wider community around them. This includes involving boys as allies who challenge harmful norms, supporting caregivers in prioritizing girls’ learning, and training teachers to address bias and create an inclusive classroom. A gender-as-equity approach strengthens the broader environment around learners so that all children can learn and thrive.

Malawi has made significant progress towards gender equity in education. When financial barriers are removed, when schools are safe and supportive, and when policies are fully implemented, girls succeed. The next step is to scale these strategies while addressing the persistent gaps in quality implementation. With sustained commitment and collaborative action, Malawi can build an education system where every child, regardless of gender, has the opportunity to learn, thrive, and shape the nation’s future.

This article was written by Sharon Gwedeza, who holds an MSc in Climate Change and a BSc in Gender Studies with policy-focused expertise in gender and education, women’s empowerment, and social inclusion. She is a Gender and Education Early Career Researcher at the Center.