The Norwegian Support to Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality in Malawi Mapping of actors and priority issues

Executive Summary

This document is a report of a review to appraise the current situation regarding the work on
women’s and gender issues in Malawi. Commissioned by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Malawi
(RNE), the review was done between February and March 2010 by Bodil Maal, senior gender
adviser from Norad and Hestern Banda1, a Malawian consultant. Based on the recommendations of
this review, the RNE will make decisions concerning its focus and priorities for its support in Malawi.
The review is the first step in a process of exploring ways in which the Embassy could work on
women’s rights and gender equality (WRGE) in Malawi, and how to raise the issue to a higher level
on the political agenda.

Malawi is a highly patriarchal society where women’s rights are weak and women score low on all
the development indicators. Indicators like the maternal mortality rate and HIV/AIDS put women in
Malawi among the worse off in the world. The risk of dying as a result of being pregnant is 1 in 7,
compared to 1 in 3800 for women in the developed world. The difficult situation for women implies
the need for high efforts in the field of women’s rights and gender equality. However, the
development partners, civil society, and government admit that efforts are fragmented and that the
Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development has institutional challenges in fulfilling
the mandate of being the overall coordinator, and in providing policy guidance in this work.

RNE in Malawi is one of the seven pilot embassies for work on Women’s Rights and Gender
Equality. In 2007/2008 fifty nine percent (59%) of the Embassy’s portfolio, according to OECD2, had
women’s rights and gender equality as a goal. This was one of the highest percentages obtained by
Norwegian embassies in Africa. Having the status of a pilot embassy would imply closer follow-up
and support, both technical and financial, from MFA/Norad.

RNE has been central in providing support to the government and civil society organisations on
gender issues in Malawi. According to the Malawi Aid Atlas, Norway is now the only bilateral donor
left, along with Iceland, supporting Gender, Youth and Sports Development, which is defined as one
of 16 sectors of ODA support by the GoM.

The Review Team (RT) found that development partners, civil society organisations, government
and Malawian politicians view Norway as a central player on gender issues in Malawi. In the
discussions with the different groups of stakeholders, several suggestions on priority areas for
strategic, effective, and more focused support to WRGE were raised. The recommendations below
are based on these suggestions. The RT has tried to single out issues considered as central to each
of the groups of stakeholders, as presented below.