Women from across the country and the African region have agreed to demand political and economic justice, including electoral reforms to laws governing political participation and representation.
They point out that, despite laws promoting gender equality in Malawi, true equity is lacking as men overwhelmingly occupy elected and appointed positions.
This came out during the Global Convening of Young Urban Women (YUW) Movements and the Women’s Rights and Feminist Alternatives Global Community Gathering in Salima.
This formed par t of ActionAid’s Beijing+30 Global Month of Feminist Solidarity and Action, commemorating 30 years since the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, with participants from Malawi, South Africa, Liberia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ghana.
ActionAid Malawi country director Yandura Chipeta said the festival was organised to reflect on the progress made on women’s rights and gender equality.
She said: “There have been changes in the legal and policy frameworks that have been progressive such as the Gender Equality Act, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act and several other legislations.
“We have seen a number of women make it to Parliament, but the numbers remain low, and we need to rethink if the current legal framework is allowing, or is it creating, a levelled platform for equal participation in leadership?”
During a panel discussion on the 30 years after the Beijing Conference, gender activist Barbara Banda said without talking about economic empowerment, women are left with no choice, but to suffer.
She said: “Women want gender quotas! When women have money, they will change communities but currently face hurdles in businesses. Women organisations are not being increasingly supported.
“Men need to be involved so that we make decisions together; we need to be in boardrooms together. We need to be holding leaders accountable when they are making decisions, when making appointments for instance.”
In an interview after the conference, Banda also faulted budgetary allocations to the Ministry of Gender which, she said, have remained minimal over the years.
She said: “The Ministry of Gender has always been allocated very little money. For example, in the current 2025-2026 budget, they got 0.8 percent of the budget of K8.7 trillion.
“We also see that there is very little data that comes out, particularly from ministries in terms of gender disaggregated figures for us to be able to follow
how they are implementing their programmes. Policies are saying one thing, but the implementation of the policies is still lacking.”
Reacting to the concerns, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Mary Navicha said Malawi has made significant strides in advancing women’s rights and gender equality.
She said government guarantees equality before the law and we have ratified key international instruments, but admitted that the gap between policy and practice remains wide.
Said Navicha: “Research and data are important for us because they give evidence to expose reality. In Malawi, in the media and past elections, we have seen the proportion of women representation in Parliament remains stagnant at 21 percent.
“This time around we need to moralize ourselves to ensure that women get more seats in Parliament and local council seats by supporting them and demanding political reforms for the upcoming elections in 2030.”
