Malawi: Women's representation quotas

Updated March 2008

Legal quotas

The Constitution of Malawi (1994) makes no provision for quotas to ensure women's representation in elective bodies, nor are there any other legal provisions. Unusually, for a Southern African country, the Constitution (Article 13(a)(i)) specifically makes the attainment of gender equality, through the "full participation of women in all spheres of Malawians society on the basis of equality with men", a principle of national policy that the State is obliged to promote. Women's rights are specifically recognized, with a view to attaining legal equality in the realm of civil law (Article 24) and the right to development acknowledges the need to give women special consideration (Article 30).

The failure to translate the women sensitive clauses of the Constitution into practical measures to ensure that women are adequately represented in elective institutions, along with the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system that tends of its own working to under represent women, has resulted in Malawi having poor (though improving) representation statistics in the National Assembly, 5.65% in 1994, 9.38% in 1999 and 14.44% in 2004 (see Gender issues: Women's representation in the Lower House of Parliament). This is roughly the same as other Southern African countries that follow the same electoral system, Botswana 11.3%, Zambia 14.2% and Zimbabwe 16.7%. In the area of local government, the 2000 elections produced a figure of 8.3% for women's representation (Patel et al 2007, 77).

Party quotas

In the absence of formal legal quotes a number of political parties in Southern Africa have resorted to set quotas for themselves in nominating and ensuring the election of women candidates. However, as Matlosa and Patel (2006, 52) remark, "For its part, the FPTP system is generally held to be less conducive to inclusiveness, for example in the case of gender parity. It has been noted in Malawi that there is not much variance between the percentage of women nominated and the percentage of women elected. The number of women in the National Assembly is therefore due to the commensurately low number of women nominated by political parties". Khembo (2005, 40) goes further to say, "Most political parties in Malawi do not have gender quotas and affirmative policies, nor do they have egalitarian ideologies of the 'left' that promote equality. As a result, gender is largely treated rhetorically as an electoral campaign issue but is never seriously integrated into party structures".

According to the Global Database of Quotas for Women (2006) the two largest parties in the National Assembly after the 2004 election have taken steps to change the situation. The Malawi Congress Party (MCP), according to its manifesto, committed itself to ensure that women hold at least 30% of decision making positions in government, though it is unclear whether this includes seats in the National Assembly. The United Democratic Front (UDF) has set a quota of 25% of its seats in the National Assembly for women in its party constitution.

Party leadership quotas

A critical aspect of reversing under representation of women in publicly elected structures is to ensure adequate representation of women in political party leadership positions. The MCP has led the way here by committing itself to allocating a third of all leadership positions in the party to women (Global Database of Quotas for Women 2006).

References

GLOBAL DATABASE OF QUOTAS FOR WOMEN 2006 "Malawi", [www] http://www.quotaproject.org/displayCountry.cfm?CountryCode=MW [opens new window] (accessed 3 March 2008).

KHEMBO, N 2005 "Gender and Party Politics in Malawi" IN Khembo, N (ed) Elections and Democratisation in Malawi: An Uncertain Process [PDF], 40-43.

MATLOSA, K AND PATEL, N 2006 Towards Electoral System Reform in Malawi, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung Occasional Paper No 10.

PATEL, N, TAMBULASI, R, MOLANDE, B & MPESI, A 2007 Consolidating Democratic Governance in Southern Africa: Malawi, EISA Research Report No 33.