Counternarratives of COVID‐19: Girls' stories of disrupted schooling in Malawi

Abstract

This article challenges mainstream discourses of girls' education during COVID‐19 that sexualize girls in the Global South and reproduce racialized differences. We draw on a longitudinal cohort study of Malawian young women conducted from 2020 to 2023 to offer counternarratives of the intersecting risks to school retention. We argue that the pandemic was less a rupture for girls' status quo than an intensification of the conditions that already characterized school‐going amidst “syndemic” conditions, including climate change, the transformation of relations of care, and the privatization of public education.