Happy International Women's Day!!

In honor of International Women’s Day, we thought we would look at how women in Malawi are striving to improve their situation. From a female president to local mothers working to support area youths, Malawian women shape their communities and are increasingly fighting for more rights and better livelihoods. 

For many women living in Malawi, the appointment of Joyce Banda as president has been an exciting indicator of change to come in the next few years for women in Malawi. More than ever, the country’s women are striving to achieve greater access to education, healthcare, opportunity and human rights. Historically, women have suffered an unequal status in society. Joyce Banda’s pledge to strive for women’s empowerment and rights reflects her own past that mirrors the situation of many women in Malawi. Banda was able to escape an abusive marriage and move on to a new life, job, and marriage, but she realizes that many women do not have access to the same opportunities as she.

“Two years later I got married again to my husband who was a high court judge in Malawi. For the next two, three years I moved from zero to hero: I was running the largest business owned by a woman in Malawi, in industrial garment manufacturing. But when I looked back his fingerprint was all over: if I wanted training, he paid; if I wanted a loan, he came with me. Because of his status in society everything was easy for me, so I had succeeded but I had succeeded because I was privileged. And that's when it began to worry me. I began to think about those that were in my situation that were not able to walk out of an abusive marriage, or maybe those that did not know where to go, that were in a single headed marriage, or widows.”

Women all over Malawi suffer similar conditions every day. But in realizing their shared situation, women have been rising up to improve their personal conditions and access to assistance.

As seen in this article, Malawi’s women have recently been standing up for improved healthcare and their rights concerning HIV/AIDS. For instance, the main antiretroviral (ARV), a drug taken to prevent the onset of HIV after one is infected with it, provided by the Malawian government is D4T. However, D4T contains harmful chemicals that results in physical disfiguration and even eventual death. Malawian women have been campaigning against the provision of these drugs and demanding more effective treatments.

In a separate event, a health clinic in the town of Chipoka was closed because it did not have sufficient staff to remain open. HIV-positive patients seeking ARVs on a Thursday were told they could not get them until Tuesday. Female activists, knowing this could be detrimental for the HIV-positive individuals, protested and spoke with officials, and managed to have the clinic reopened 7 days a week as originally intended. (Note: Taking ARVs sporadically or inconsistently can lead to drug resistance, rendering a particular drug or drug cocktail useless.)

“We are going to challenge the government to make a policy to ensure a sustainable ART [antiretroviral treatment] regimen regardless of whether donors are here or not. And we also need the government to make sure that [HIV] positive women have their own resources like savings loans and fertilizers [for farming]. It’s our responsibility to fight for these things,” stressed rights activist Ms. Sibongile Chibwe

In other parts of Malawi, many women’s groups and mothers’ groups have been coming together to monitor the enrollment of girls in school, as well as their attendance and retention. These groups realize that increasing education for girls will in turn decrease the poverty rates in a society – raising the overall productivity of that community. UNICEF published a short piece on a Mothers’ Group that has helped coax girls back to school at Mnjolo Primary School. There are many cases such as this in which these groups have been successful in increasing enrollment by providing things that very poor families cannot afford for school, like uniforms.

There is growing hope for the women of Malawi as they rise up to change their own conditions. In taking this stance, women are empowering themselves and making the first steps of changing century old attitudes, habits, and situations that have deprived women everywhere. Today we salute these women and hope to be able to support them in their efforts.