[2] When Longwe was a young secondary school teacher, the government refused to grant her maternity leave.
Longwe formed a lobbying group that succeeded in forcing the government to introduce maternity leave for teachers in 1974.
This group played a role in ensuring that the Zambian government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
[6] The basic premise is that women's development can be viewed in terms of five levels of equality: welfare, access, "conscientization", participation and control.
FEMNET, which was established in 1988, has the goal of assisting NGOs to contribute to women's development, equality and rights, and to provide an infrastructure for information and empowerment.