GENDER
UN Gender Policy Statement - Malawi
SECTION 1
Malawi SDNP
 
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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL

1.2 CURRENT SITUATION OF WOMEN AND GENDER IN MALAWI

1.3 CURRENT WORK ON  GENDER BY THE UN
 

1.1 GENERAL

The Malawi Government has adopted Poverty Alleviation as the central policy for national development. The strategy aims at reducing and, eventually, eliminating, poverty in Malawi. This strategy is enshrined in the Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) and the recently launched Vision 2020. It has been established that a great proportion of those affected by poverty are women. Generally it is also established that women's poverty is exacerbated by their lack of access to the productive resources of land, income, credit, appropriate technologies and information.

The UN Joint Gender Policy Statement is a conscious way of addressing the existing gender imbalance, recognising the potential of women and legitimising their contribution to national development.
 

1.2 CURRENT SITUATION OF WOMEN AND GENDER IN MALAWI

Previous analyses on the social situation of women in Malawi have revealed that women are seriously disadvantaged in almost every sector of development.

This is largely attributed to social attitudes against women entrenched in the Malawi culture which discriminates gender based on sex. This gender selection and imbalance has contributed significantly to subjecting most women to severe and harsh living conditions making them shoulder a higher percentage of responsibilities and manage heavy workloaqs in the community. The imbalance becomes even more noticeable at policy and decision making levels where participation of women is almost negligible and the economic value of their contribution to agricultural production not acknowledged in the national account.

These various UN sponsored conferences have mandated the United Nations Specialised Agencies and the United Nations Programmes and Funds to work together with governments in seeking ways of improving and recognising the social, political and economic contribution of Women to national development endeavours.

In Malawi these global mandates have been translated into "The Malawi Platform for Action" which recognises the importance of safeguarding the rights and freedoms of women as enshrined in the new Constitution while at the same time identifying areas of focus in the process of promoting equality and equity of women, and enhancing the effective participation of women in development.

Currently, the political thinking is strongly in favour of integration of a gender perspective in development, but gender equality, and in particular mainstrearning, still remain conceptual because these are new concepts which have yet to be understood clearly through sensitisation, awareness and training.

It is also noticeable that only limited efforts are being directed at translating the rhetoric into action and this inertia coupled with the existing negative attitudes in many aspects of community life and institutions appear to contribute significantly to the continuing status quo which perpetuates discrimination and harassment of women.

Women in Malawi continue to be under-represented at political, policy and decision making levels. This is due to culture which generally assigns leadership roles to men and partly due to low levels of education amongst females.

Significantly however, the slow progress in addressing the social issues in the country is attributed to:-

  1. the inadequate understanding of gender perspective in policies and programmes;
  2. the unplanned way of dealing with issues of social development; and
  3. lack of policy, coordination and monitoring mecha nisms to guide the social development process.
1.3 CURRENT WORK ON GENDER BY THE UN

The UN experience in Malawi indicate that individual UN agencies have responded and acted in isolation to issues and requests aimed at addressing gender imbalances. However, the draft Country Strategy Note (CSN) developed in 1996 emphasises UN system cooperation in order to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of UN Agencies when addressing gender issues.

In order to encourage coordination in the Agencies approadh to integrating gender into all UN programmes and to effectively assist government in gender responsiveness, a UN Gender and Developmerit Working Group, comprising UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, WFP, WHO, UNHCR, FAO, UNESCO, UNAIDS and the World Bank was established.

In Malawi, The UN Gender Working Group has initiated and supported the following joint activities:-

  1. UN funding to support Malawi delegates to the UN Fourth World Conference on women in Beijing and coordination on steps to be followed to influence govemment to put in place follow-up action on the conference;
  2. Identification of a need for a UN Joint Gender Policy Statement for Malawi;
  3. Commemoration of the International Women's day by all UN agencies on 8th March, 1996;
  4. Participation in the preparatory work on major UN Conferences (i.e. ICPD, WSSID, Fourth World Conference on Women);
  5. Joint review of some project proposals submitted to UN agencies for funding (notably, the UNFPA Gender and Population Project and the UNDP's Programme Support on Enhancement of Women and Gender Equality).
Since it is now acknowledged that gender is cross-cutting in all sectors of development, it provides an opportunity to the UN system for putting in place a gender coordination policy to embrace all UN Agencies.

The production of a UN Joint Gender Policy Statement reinforces the ideals and principles of coordination and cooperation stated in the draft Country Strategy Note. Similarly previous support given by UN in the formulation of the Policy of the Poverty Alleviation Programme in 1995 shows that UN Agencies in Malawi, are committed to searching for "new alternatives" of integrating a gender perspective into the country's development policies and programmes.
 
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