Malawi

NGO Gender Network says it will start meeting women aspirants across the country to strategise on their ambitious plan to have a representation of more than 40 percent of women in Parliament during the next year’s general elections.
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The Norwegian embassy in Malawi has provided a grant to women's organizations to enhance the skills and confidence of women candidates so they can run effective campaigns and overcome gender based discrimination, and for civic awareness campaigns on the need for more women in decision-making positions. Already 425 women have shown interest in running in 2009 out of which 200 women have met party qualifications to run.
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There cannot be sustainable women empowerment in development and politics if women lobby groups leave out culture in their campaigns, Chikwawa District Commissioner Lawford Palani has said. He said most organisations lobbying for greater women representation were forgetting culture as a crucial component in the quest to achieve the SADC 30 percent women participation goal, set in Blantyre in 1997.
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MCP, the country’s major opposition party, has said it will not give any special treatment to its women aspirants for parliamentary seats—to fulfil the 50/50 Sadc declaration. But Malawi still has the lowest representation of women in decision-making position in the region. There is only 16 percent representation of women in the Executive arm of government, 12 percent in the Judiciary and 14 percent in the Legislature.
To read the full article, please visit the Nation Online's Website.

Executive Director for Gender Support Programme (GESP), Cecilia Mussa said on Saturday most political parties were favouring men to women to stand as aspirants, a situation she described as detrimental to achieving 50-50 representation in the National Assembly. Speaking at Dowa Community Ground where GESP held a voter registration awareness campaign, said most women lack support from their respective political parties, resulting in their withdrawal from primary elections.

Malawians have for the first time elected the first woman vice-president Joyce Banda, 47 years after independence. This was after the Electoral Commission announced on May 21 that incumbent president Bingu wa Mutharika had won the May 19 Presidential election.
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