By Hope Msukwa, contributor:
Agatha Lenalick Nachiyombo enrolled for a male-dominated carpentry and joinery course at Misuku Community Skills Development Centre in 2017 hoping to progress to a national technical college for higher levels.
She quit just two months into her training.
“I was bored with the course. Every time I was in class, clients were looking for my hairdo services,” Nachiyombo recounts.
Her dream of pursuing a technical skill at a national technical college is still alive. Standing in her way is the strong challenge from boys who dominate selection.
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But Nachiyombo and other female aspirants for a career in hard or soft skills should be encouraged by the 2023 admission of female students into formal technical colleges which is over 10 percentage points higher than the 2018 levels.
Five years ago, a male apprentice had over two times chances higher than a female student of being selected to a technical college.
The gap is slowly tightening.
In private technical colleges, gender disparity at admission is narrowing down to equal entry.
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In 2023, over 45 percent of admissions into private technical colleges were girls.
The gender gap is more pronounced in public technical colleges, where first-year males are nearly twice as many as females.
Gender stereotypes continue to manifest in choices of courses too. In the 2023 selection, females shrugged off male students understandably in cosmetology, food production and tailoring and fashion design.
They were a whisker higher than males in painting and decoration but slightly lower than males in tour guide, information and communication technology, administrative studies and motorcycle mechanics.
The two genders were at par in edible horticulture and refrigeration and air conditioning.
Greater proportions of courses in which female apprentices lead their male counterparts are offered in private technical colleges and are largely soft-skills courses.
However, there was higher acceptance for females than males in plumbing, the odd one out among the male dominated courses where females have made inroads.
Jane Sasa Kayange scoffs at her colleagues who pursue trades deemed male related.
“You wasted your time. Why not just take a good course at Miracle [Technical College] so you can start a beauty salon?” she pressures Nachiyombo to switch to a course relevant to her business.
Trades such as cosmetology and tailoring and fashion design need small capital in form of equipment and human resources unlike welding and other hard-skill courses which demand heavy equipment and personnel.
“I completed my training in 2017 but to date, I have not managed to source the equipment for my dream welding work shop,” Cecilia Kuyokwa says.
In contrast, Twapalisha Erica Fwilile hit the ground running after completing her fashion and design course with her thriving tailoring shop in Misuku Market.
Fwilile has her admirers. One of them is 17-year-old Stella Munkhondya who intends to pursue tailoring and fashion design.
A 2022 Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training Authority (Teveta) Tracer Study indicates that “male students continue to be enrolled in programmes that train them for stereotypically male occupations such as construction, while most of the female students are enrolled in programmes such as tailoring and administration.”
Village Head Mwandisi III Jockey Mwafwongo says pioneer female apprentices in his village are yet to show the benefits of their trade except for tailoring, fashion and design.
“We have many women who were trained in these hard skills but they are doing nothing years after completing training.
“Instead of being a good example of women empowerment, they are discouraging those who wanted to do the same trade,” he says.
Mwandisi is a trained welder, a vocation he obtained in 2017 at Misuku Skills Community Development Centre to inspire his subjects to enroll in technical education.
On access to boarding facilities, the ratios favour male students who are more than three times likely when compared with their female counterparts.
To partly address the discrepancy, Skills for Vibrant Economy (Save) Project is funding the construction of a 120-bedroom girls’ hostel at Lilongwe Technical College.
The college’s principal Suzgika Mvalo says his institution is on a nationwide career guidance campaign in secondary schools “to make known to the school leavers of the many career opportunities a technical college like Lilongwe offers.”
“Efforts are underway to attract more girls into these [male-dominated] courses like the introduction of girls bursaries and there is a big improvement at the moment.
“We hope the strategy will greatly improve the situation so that we reach the 50:50 male-to-female ratio,” Mvalo says.
Teveta Head of Corporate Affairs Lewis Msasa says progress to improve women’s access and participation Tevet appears to be slow.
“This is despite the campaign gaining a considerable amount of attention locally and internationally, coupled by policies to improve enrolment rates for girls and women in Tevet,” Msasa says.
Citing a study conducted years ago, he says misconceptions are still widespread “that because of their gender, girls or women cannot pursue courses in the Tevet sector.”
For Nachiyombo and other girls dreaming to pursue their careers in technical skills “the other good news is that the Save Project is also providing bursaries to all those girls with science who have applied for Tevet courses.”
