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Abstract

The development sector has for a long time regarded women’s economic empowerment as the magic bullet to women’s resilience against the experience of violence. However, recent research studies are establishing that not all women’s empowerment activities lead to a transformational impact in the overall wellbeing of women.

This study was undertaken with the purpose of contributing to the body of academic literature the experiences women undergo through as they try to improve their economic wellbeing when they are exposed to various women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

The research study sought to find answers to whether the economic empowerment of women in Malawi builds their resilience to violence. The question was broken down to specific questions and focused on three key areas. The first area was to establish the benefits of women’s economic empowerment for gender equality. The second area focused on the ways in which WEE helps to build the resilience of women to challenge violence and the final area of focus examined whether the measures that are currently in place to promote WEE reach the most vulnerable women in Malawi.

A qualitative research approach using exploratory study was used during the collection of primary data. A total of 20 women were interviewed and were derived from urban, semi-urban and rural areas of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. The study used semi structured interviews that were administered through an interview guide. Just like the research questions, the questions in the interview guide were also open ended and were formulated as a breakdown of each of the research questions. A thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the collected data.

The study results revealed that women’s economic empowerment does not necessarily result into the creation of resilience to violence. This is because it was established that empowerment alone does not help in building the resilience of women to challenge violence. As such the study agrees with scholars that have established that economic empowerment of women is not the only protective factor towards violence, especially intimate partner violence in the home as well as in public spaces such as transportation and in the workplace. The study results also revealed that in as much as there are several women focused economic empowerment initiatives that are being implemented by both the government of Malawi, the private and NGO sector, vulnerable women in Malawi are not being reached due to weak systems in the identification of such groups.

As a result of this, it can fairly be concluded that obstacles to achieving gender equality through women’s economic empowerment are still in existence.

Course: International Development Studies (DL) - MSC - P2517PTD

Date Deposited: 2024-02-08

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14378.html