Emily Bennitt
- @Ebennitt
- | She/her
In southern Africa, the traditional mindset dictates that women raise children, while men work to support their families. However, attitudes are changing and there is an increasing presence of and support for women working in conservation, including community initiatives to bring like-minded women together, post-graduate training in the latest research techniques, and targeted employment of women as guides and rangers.
Countries such as Zambia and Botswana have established local groups of Women for Conservation that share employment opportunities and disseminate information. Many women are enrolled in graduate programs through local universities, where they are being taught to apply problem-solving skills to environmental problems and should emerge with capacitated to become conservation leaders and champions. Numerous projects to empower women in the context of conservation are being implemented simultaneously across southern Africa, and lessons learned from one project could be applied to another to enable parallel challenges to be overcome more easily, but communication lines among projects have rarely been established.
To facilitate the exchange of ideas, enhance networking opportunities and support the recognition of the role of women in conservation, we are organising an international congress, named “Women Conserving Southern Africa”, to be held in Kasane, Botswana, from the 16th – 20th February, 2026. Similar programs are under way in the global North, but there is no evidence of any initiatives with this theme covering all of southern Africa. We are inviting women from different backgrounds engaged in conservation through local communities, scientific research, policy development and NGOs.
The congress will be organized around central themes such as gender equality, climate change, community-based natural resource management, indigenous knowledge systems, and biodiversity conservation. Each theme will be addressed through presentations, discussions and workshops to draw on participant experiences to develop recommendations for action based on common challenges and potential solutions. The resulting recommendations will be collated into materials for wide dissemination, including academic and popular publications, policy briefs and news articles. Over the course of the congress, women will be identified to set up and lead a network for each theme that will further collaborations beyond the scope of the event.
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