Curriculum for Bachelor of Gender and Development

Human Ecology is one of the three academic departments of the faculty of Food and Human Sciences of LUANAR. The department has the mandate of providing high quality training in Human Ecology. The department will also strive to lead in research and consultancy in the areas of textiles, consumer’s issues, gender and child care and households in Malawi. Bachelor of Gender and Development will be located within this department. This is because Human Ecology department (formerly known as Home Economics) has in the past partnered with Government of Malawi to build capacity of gender professionals. However locating this programme in Human Ecology department has got its own challenges. Feminists feel the discipline of home economics exists to strengthen and reinforce masculine views of women’s roles thus most radical feminists call for the abolition of this field of knowledge altogether. However its existence in this department can be justified on the basis that in Human Ecology we study families. Families are the centre of inquiry and as we do that we discover that issues of inequalities that exist between men and women are evident thus requiring a strategy to deal with them. In understanding how families work and function we have an opportunity to be informed in our desire for gender equality. Therefore the fight for gender equality has to start in the private spheres for it to be real in the public spheres.