Women's Leadership
Hon. Dr. Jessie Kabwila is a politician, academic, and feminist. Member of Parliament in Malawi, she is currently the Chairperson of the Women Parliamentary Caucus.
iKNOW Politics: In 2014, the incumbent female president Joyce Banda lost the presidency and the number of women parliamentarians went down from 43 to 33 (22.3% to 16.7%). Today, Malawi is ranked 120th worldwide when it comes to women’s representation in Parliament. How do you explain this decline in women’s political representation and the lack of women’s engagement in Malawian politics?
Hon. Dr. Jessie Kabwila: In many ways, Malawi is suffering a backlash of having a woman become president. The challenges that Joyce Banda met are usually exacted on all women who want to be leaders, especially leaders in the political arena. The lack of women’s engagement is mostly caused by the discrimination that women face due to patriarchy in Malawi, at religion and indigenous cultural levels. In addition, politics is a very expensive career that favours the well-educated, this is something elusive to most women in Malawi, majority of the poor, those told they are born to be married, compliment men and not be leaders. The patriarchal culture discourages women from careers that keep a woman out of the house for long, often travelling, holding meetings and debating usually way into the night, and constructing power to attain strong political positions in parties.
Although there is no legislated quota, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), the party you represent, aims to allocate 33% of the seats to women at all levels of the party structure. Additionally, according to the party Manifesto, MCP will "ensure that women occupy 30% or more of all decision, policy and managerial positions in the government". How much has been achieved in regards to these commitments? Has there been any resistance to implement these measures?
Like many parties, MCP says that it wants to attain women’s empowerment in politics but MCP needs to spell out exactly how it will attain this thirty percent, especially in its structures, at rural, urban and periurban levels. It also needs to outline at policy and implementation levels, clear ways on how it plans to increase women’s presence in leadership positions, in line with the Gender Equality Act, CEDAW and gender protocol. MCP must look at the structure of the party, see how the women’s wing is structured to be the kitchen of the party, neatly removed from the power track of leadership.
MCP needs to spell out how it plans to fight violence against women in politics that is in the form of verbal, physical and other forms of violence targeting women like me. Throughout the ordeal of experiencing various forms of the state orchestrated violence such as petrol bombing, my political party MCP abandoned me.
Violence against women in politics is also perpetrated within the political parties. For instance, in MCP I have been harassed through a suspension without trail and a disciplinary process that was held by the party without my input. When at the conclusion of the disciplinary process I was found innocent of all the allegations against me, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party still pushed to expel me from the party. The NEC of MCP attempted to do this even though this is against the party rules. In order to justify its actions to expel me from the party, NEC’s claim is that the expulsion is valid because I have ambitions to be the party president. As women in politics it is a political “crime” to dare to dream to be the president of a party or a country. Consequently, the patriarchal political system and practices unleash all forms of violence to prevent individual women and women as a group from having ambitions, dreams to be in the highest levels of power and decision making within political parties and public decision making. In politics women are often reduced to sex objects. MCP needs to come out clear on this. A party that wants to increase women’s representation will be seen by the affirmative action policies it adopts. The questions is does MCP have such policies and processes or not.
MCP in its current form needs an urgent paradigm shift and walk that talk on women’s empowerment. In a democracy, it is not a crime to aspire for leadership and the way a party treats well-educated, high performing women like me, either inspires confidence in other women to join politics or deflates them, some to the point of being afraid to walk the path that I have walked and am still walking.
What do you propose to increase women’s political participation in Malawi? Are there any other political party initiatives besides the MCP and the United Democratic Front’s (UDF) voluntary quotas? What about government and Parliament initiatives? What is the Women Parliamentary Caucus, which you chair, doing in this regard?
You cannot change patriarchy, a structure, without putting a structural change to counter it. MCP and all political parties need an affirmative action tool like the zebra listing or in the least, a 40 -60 gender policy in line with the Gender Equality Act. Political parties in Malawi need to look at sexual and reproductive health and rights and should stop adopting policies and legislation that policies women’s bodies but recognise and treat women as self-determined people who have rights over their bodies and minds. Political parties should not prioritize moralisation over service delivery and a human rights perspective to governance. They should not treat women as first and foremost, child laboratories, and appendages of men. Policies need to be formulated in line with women’s empowerment, linking them to how political women empowerment leads to development and attainment of the SDGs. That should be linked to the identity of the party, made to be an anchor and engine of the party that wants to develop the nation. The party needs to be seen to be working for a national buy in this concept. They should not just speak but act to show that they believe in women’s empowerment in politics and move forward to implement what they have put on paper.
To better understand the role of women’s networks, the Women in Public Service Project released the publication "Women's Political Networks: Defining Leadership, Breaking Barriers, and Fostering Change," a research paper and toolkit by Lucina Di Meco, gender expert and Director of the Girls' Education Program at Room to Read.
The launch of the publication included a conversation with women leaders leveraging networks and technology to make a difference at all levels of decision-making around the world. The discussion highlighted the ways in which political networks can help women leaders break barriers and drive change toward global gender parity.
Click here to access the publication.
Watch the launch event below.
Mrs. Sunkarie Kamara, Mayor of Makeni City and President of Local Council Association of Sierra Leone (LCASL), spoke to UCLG Africa during the steering committee meeting of LEDNA on the fringes of COP22 in Marrakesh on 11 November 2016. She is the first female mayor of her jurisdiction and she is currently the only female mayor in Sierra Leone's six City Council municipalities.
Belquis Al Lahabi was a leading voice in Sanaa’s Change Square. In this conservative country -- dubbed the worst in the world for women -- the revolution offered feminists like Belquis a faint glimmer of hope.
But as the country descends into war, women’s issues are being pushed to the side. Click here to see the documentary.
The spark that lit the Arab world aflame in 2010 was lit by Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor street vendor from the town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, who set himself on fire after being mistreated by police. Or so the story goes.
But, there’s a lesser-known story about the origins of the revolution — a story about the determination of a group of Tunisian women in the mining town of Redeyef.
Even before the revolution, Ghazala Mhamdi was leading the fight for jobs, freedom and human rights against the corrupt regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Ben Ali. Tunisia is now a fledgling democracy, and Ghazala, the veteran anti-government activist, is running for parliament. Click here to see the documentary.
VVEngage is a Vital Voices signature fellowship supporting outstanding women political leaders making and influencing policy across the globe. Through this fully-funded fellowship, we aim to increase the capacity, decision-making power and effectiveness of women leaders in politics and government, shifting culture around women’s public leadership and moving towards equality in public representation globally. We also aim to work towards a more inclusive and equitable world by advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through policy.
Through this fellowship, Vital Voices advances women’s political leadership and the SDGs by conducting online and in-person* trainings with experts such as women leaders from the Vital Voices Global Network and professors from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The fellowship also connects participants to a global network of peers and mentors, such as current and former female heads of state with the Council of Women World Leaders, with whom they can brainstorm and share challenges and best practices.
Click here to learn more and to access application details.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a 10-Point Action Agenda for Advancing Gender Equality in Crisis Settings (10PAA), a roadmap to guide its development programming towards results that will help transform and advance gender equality in crisis contexts and achieve the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The 10PAA is central to UNDP’s new Crisis Offer, as well as its new Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025. It represents a strong corporate commitment to addressing the most stubborn roots of gender inequalities.
The 10PAA is the result of a broad consultation process that aimed at finding entry points to strengthen gender-transformational results and women’s leadership and participation in crisis contexts. It is grounded in the understanding that deep-rooted, intersectional discrimination sits at the heart of the multiple challenges humanity faces and reinforces models of dominance that exclude and leave women behind, especially in crisis settings.
Click here to access the publication.
Online violence against women in politics (OVAW-P) poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. OVAW-P encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from politics simply because they are women. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. This online violence has a chilling effect on the political ambitions and engagement of women and girls, decreasing their presence and agency in politics and public life. Stopping gender-based attacks online is a solvable problem, and it is the fastest and clearest investment toward building an internet that enables everyone to be politically engaged.
This report includes a list of interventions that technology platforms, governments, civil society organizations, and the media can take to make meaningful progress towards ending online violence against women in politics.
Click here to access the report.
The Women in Government Fellowship is a six-month program that is focused on capacity-building, training, and mentorship of women in politics. It seeks to enhance and improve the quality of political participation of women.
The fellows will undergo in-person workshops, intensive virtual learning sessions, and hands-on mentorship by seasoned women politicians. This three-pronged approach will provide an academic grounding of democratic frameworks and policy-making, up-skill them with practical know-hows of electioneering, build the fellows' personal brands through personalised Public Narrative trainings by coaches from Harvard Kennedy School, and learn the ropes of politicking directly from a mentor who is undergoing the realities and tackling the challenges of being a woman in public office.
Application deadline: 30th November 2022
Shortlisted applicants' interviews: 5-15th December 2022
Selected Fellows list: 21st December 2022
Click here to learn more.
A compendium of ideas to reach gender parity in municipal politics
How can we begin to overcome the countless obstacles that are preventing women from fully participating in municipal politics?
The suggestions in this Inventory were compiled following consultations we carried out across Canada, as part of FCM’s Toward Parity Project.
These actions are not official FCM recommendations. They are potential strategies that need to be assessed to determine whether they can be adapted to fit local realities and opportunities.
Click here to access the guide.
To inform our own programming on advancing gender-balanced appointments and to establish a scalable, replicable, transformative model for advancing gender-balanced appointments, RepresentWomen gathered learnings from five similar initiatives around the country.
The following summary reviews these conversations:
- Key ingredients for success
- Stumbling blocks
- What they wish they knew
- Common tactics
Click here to access the guide.
For its inaugural Solutions Summit, RepresentWomen gathered experts in election administration, voting rights, and democracy reform to discuss the viable, scalable, and transformative initiatives that will strengthen our democracy. Over the course of three days, they held sessions on fair elections, fair access, and fair representation, ending each day with ways we could take actions to advance the solutions discussed that day.
They compiled all of those ideas, resources, and guides into one place to create this 2022 Solutions Summit Resource Guide, which provides a plethora of take-action options so you can be a part of the solution.
Click here to download the guide.
The internet is a tool that can simplify and encourage democratic engagement, but the rise of online disinformation challenges even the world’s most robust democracies. While the most recognizable disinformation campaigns are related to national politics, disinformers frequently employ narratives targeting women’s gender and sexuality in order to disrupt democracy. This is often then amplified by media agents and the general population, who may not have the intent to drive disinformation nor the capacity to discern it. NDI’s robust research in this field concludes that gendered disinformation is the use of false information to confuse or mislead by manipulating gender as a social cleavage to attack women and/or to sway political outcomes. It has three primary goals: to keep women out of politics; to change the views of women and men about women’s political participation; and specifically to change party policies or political outcomes. In short, it aims to undermine women’s free and equal participation in politics to the detriment of inclusive, resilient democracy.
Based on research conclusions, this paper outlines recommendations for NDI, its partners and those working globally to mitigate the democratic harms of disinformation, to ensure women’s safe participation and leadership in politics, and to monitor the social media and information environment in elections.
Click here to access the guide.
This guide is designed to increase the understanding of the legal obligations of countries in the West and Central Africa (WCA) region to achieve gender equality in decision-making. It focuses on strengthening efforts to improve the legal framework in the region to ensure that laws are clearly drafted, implementable and effective. Special focus is devoted to the processes by which laws supporting political participation of women are developed, negotiated, drafted, passed and implemented. It aims to strengthen law-making processes that build and secure the legal rights of women who want to run for elections and who are ready to take over leadership positions in their parliaments and governments. Legal instruments are presented that can be used to advance the political participation of women.
The comparative experiences presented in this guide address both examples of good practices and laws that have failed because their regulations are imprecise, unclear and/or lack effective sanctions. The guide presents also various provisions of laws resulting from different constitutional requirements or electoral systems, assessing their advantages and disadvantages.
Click here to download the guide published by UN Women in 2021.
This Handbook has been developed as publication by register of Political Parties with support from the Papua New Guinea Election Commission and the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea. This is part of UN Women Make the Change programme funded by the Australian Government’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development Programme.
Click here to download the report.