The United Nations (UN) in Malawi has ranked political parties and parliamentarians among stakeholders failing to adequately support bids seeking to include gender quotas in the country’s laws to improve women’s political participation.

The international body has made the observation in its 2021 country annual results report which highlights achievements and gaps in the socioeconomic initiatives its agencies undertook in the year.

Komatsubara: There is limited
support from various quarters

The Republican Constitution makes no provision for quotas to ensure women’s representation in elective bodies. The Gender Equality Act provisions only focus on public appointments advocating for not less than 40 percent and not more than 60 percent of either sex.

However, the UN Women, a United Nations agency that upholds women’s human rights and other pro-gender institutions have been pushing for the adoption of the quota system in elective positions.

The report, signed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative Shigeki Komatsubara, reads: “There is limited support from various quarters such as political parties, parliamentarians on the gender quotas to have increased women.”

Currently, the women representation in Parliament stands at 21 percent and 13 percent for local government following elections held in 2019 and subsequent by-elections held recently.

The report further proclaims that the UN Women has been engaging political parties and Parliament through the Legal Affairs Committee to push for the adoption of the gender quotas.

“UN Women supported the development of a document on Frequently Asked Questions on Gender Quotas and its dissemination, a policy brief on gender quotas, 10 advocacy engagements with political parties and the Legal Affairs Committee,” the report said.

Key among the proposed legislative amendments on gender quotas, according to the Legal Affair Committee chairperson Peter Dimba, is that each district should reserve a parliamentary seat for a woman.

In an interview on Wednesday, Dimba described the proposal, which would automatically secure 28 seats for women, as controversial, hence the resistance from some members of Parliament.

“The UN team indeed met us and we discussed. Some members of my committee were in support of the proposal while others were against it because, they argued, it defeats the principles of equality as it will be more advantageous to women than men.

“However, that proposal has not been tabled in Parliament so we cannot say that we rejected it. All in all, it is a controversial proposal,” he said.

Former ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) is one of the parties that have been advocating for increased women’s participation. The party’s constitution stipulates a 25 percent quota of its seats in the National Assembly for women. However, the party has not been able to achieve that.

UDF spokesperson Yusuf Mwawa could not clearly outline what measures they put in place to ensure they meet the target.

“On our part, through our women’s wing we encourage women to aspire for all elective positions at party and national levels. However, the challenge is that in the constitution there are no articles that support gender quotas.

“It is, therefore, difficult to achieve that target. Having seats allocated to women aspirants in the constitution would make it easy for parties to meet its gender targets,” he said.

Political analyst Hellen Chabunya blamed the country’s laws and political parties’ failure to create a conducive environment for women participation as the reason behind low women representation.

“Another dimension is affirmative action within the political parties and perhaps through reforming our legislation. Political violence against women both physically and emotionally [including cyber-bullying] is a real inhibitor of women in politics.

“Political parties must ensure that primaries are levelled up for women to fairly participate. You will find most women will opt to contest as independents due to this barrier of entry through the primaries.

“To be honest, it is actually more advisable looking at the success rate of female independent candidates that they perhaps focus more on their own candidacy as opposed to propping up political parties which tend to not serve women well,” she said.

Chabunya advocated for gender quota legislation in elective positions that are in line with the 60:40 ratio outlined in the Gender Equality Act on public appointments.

“Like Rwanda in 2003, it set a 30 percent quota for women and five years later, they had 56 percent in 2008 and that jumped to 64 percent in 2013.

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