Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) has registered 7 162 217 people for the September 16 2025 General Election, with women dominating at 4 093 369, an equivalent of 57.2 percent of the provisional voters’ roll.
The electoral body announced the figure in a statement on Tuesday which showed that 2 515 315 people comprising 1 097 551 men and 1 417 767 women registered in the third and final phase of the voter registration exercise.
The total number of registered voters represent about 65.4 percent of the 10 957 490 people (5 146 679 men and 5 810 811 women) that MEC projected to register. However, MEC achieved about 70.4 percent female voters’ registration and 59.6 percent males.
Commenting on the figures, Oxfam in Malawi country director Lingalireni Mihowa and political analyst Ernest Thindwa said in separate interviews that it was not surprising that females dominate in voter registration although they have low representation in both Parliament and local councils.
Mihowa, whose organisation advocates for fair female representation, said poor education and economic background among most female candidates affects their performance during elections.
She said: “There is also social bias because culturally, men have been preferred leaders than women. This also affects women themselves though they are the majority in terms of voters.
“They would think that a man would be a better leader than a woman on the ballot and they end up choosing men.”
Thindwa, on the other hand, noted that besides the fact that the majority of Malawians are women, they also tend to be at the sharp margins of poverty in an ailing economy, a situation that makes them more inclined to vote for men.
He observed that the low female representation in Malawi’s elections will remain a permanent feature because the country’s electoral system is largely candidate-centred as opposed to party-centred.
Said Thindwa: “In the prevailing circumstances, only an affirmative action in the form of gender quotas for elective bodies can increase women representation to recognisable and desirable levels to achieve the inclusion ideal.”
In the 2019 Tripartite Elections, there were about 6 853 570 registered voters out of which about 3.8 million were females, representing roughly 55.4 percent of voter’s registration. In the parliamentary elections, women won 20.8 percent of the seats in the 193-member Parliament.
During the first post-independence multiparty elections in 1994, six percent of the legislators were women while in the 1999-2004 cycle, women’s representation in Parliament rose to 11 percent before reaching 13.5 percent in the 2004-2009 parliamentary cycle.
The representation rose in 2009-2014 to 22.3 percent before it dropped to 16.6 percent in the 2014 tripartite polls.
Women’s Legal Resources Centre (Wolrec) executive director Maggie Kathewera Banda is on record as having said women’s representation in Parliament is limited due to parties’ reluctance to field women in elections
