Mentorship is a process where ‘an individual with more experience in a given professional field, helps someone with less experience (the mentee) to grow professionally. The Mentorship approach is viewed as a critical activity that would build the capacity of young women, in this case, where mentors would guide and help shape the professional growth and learning of the mentee, serve as a positive role model, share experiences on the journey that these seniors went through before accessing current positions with a clear intention to help mentees build self-confidence and demystify gender stereotypes that prevent many women from exercising their full potential.
The program was premised on the basis that despite nearly 70% of the population of Malawi are 30 years and below, participation of young women in politics both as members and leaders remains limited. The participation of women in politics and decision-making positions has persistently remained low over the years, despite a number of efforts that have been implemented over the years to increase women’s participation.
Furthermore, during election times, fewer women are able to secure the nomination of their parties to contest as candidates than men. All this points to the fact that women are not participating at the same level as men. With so few women in these party and political positions, Malawi is less likely to make significant progress towards the gender related international and regional convention, protocols and treaties including the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action nor is the gender gap likely to be closed in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, designing this module was to provide an overarching guidance to both senior party members as mentors and the young women as mentees under the approach so that these women feel supported, encouraged and motivated to participate in political politics and political leadership positions.
