Women Participation in Adult Literacy Programme: A case of Kabompo District in North Western Province

The main purpose of this research study was to evaluate levels of women participation in
the Adult Literacy programme in Kabompo District of North-western province.The study
was mainly meant to answer the questions raised as specified in the objectives.
Objectives for the study included: establishing why women enrol in the Adult Literacy programme, to establish factors that force women to drop out from the adult Literacy programme, to find out what can be done to reduce the dropout rate of women in adult literacy classes.In an effort to come up with answers, the study used the survey design, where both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed. In this case, the main instruments used for data collection included questionnaire and interview guides. Quantitative data was collected through the use of questionnaires that were administered on teachers and
data was collected qualitatively from adult literacy learners and education officials by
way of focused group discussion and interview guides. Non- random sampling method,specifically purposive sampling technique and simple random sampling were used to select respondents. The total sample comprised 204 respondents. The population for the study included all the adult literacy learners. Informants were drawn from 10 schools that offered adult literacy and from Ministry of Education.The study established that women enrolled in adult literacy programmes for various reasons ranging from personal, socio-economic. The study further revealed factors causing low participation of women in literacy programme as emanating from personal,economic, health, family, institutional and cultural backgrounds.The study also revealed that although there had been initiatives and commitment to create opportunities for girls/women to be educated, there are strong forces counteracting these positive trends. Findings to the investigations indicated that there were a lot of factors which constrained women participation in literacy programmes. It is evident that despite
the realisation by the Government that literacy is an important part of human
development, there is a problem arising from the lack of teaching and learning materials
as well as the absence of trained teachers for adults. Additionally, lack of relevance of content taught is another reason why women dropout from the literacy programme
The study also revealed that there had been no consistent and coordinated policy on
literacy in Zambia. Therefore, without policy the future of programmes is questionable and thus cannot succeed.