National Gender Policy

In order to enhance participation of women and men, girls and boys for sustainable and equitable development for poverty eradication, the government of Malawi has elaborated the national gender policy in 2011.
The Policy seeks to achieve the following broad objectives: (i) to increase access, retention and completion to quality education for girls and boys; (ii) to ensure gender issues and concerns are addressed throughout the health sector, (iii) to ensure gender concerns and issues are mainstreamed throughout all activities related to HIV and AIDS, (iv) to strengthen gender mainstreaming in the agriculture, food and nutrition security sector, (v) to strengthen gender mainstreaming in the natural resources and environment and climate change in order to achieve equality and sustainable environmental development, (vi) to reduce poverty among women and other vulnerable groups through economic empowerment, (vii) to promote women’s participation in politics and decision making; (viii) to eliminate gender based violence child abuse and human trafficking, (ix) to strengthen the capacity of the National Gender Machinery.
This policy has identified eight priorities areas, namely: (i) gender, literacy, education and training, (ii) gender and health, (iii) agriculture, food security and govern nutrition, (iv) natural resources, environmental management and climate change, (v) governance and human rights, (vi) poverty eradication through economic empowerment, (vii) gender and HIV and AIDS, (viii) gender based violence.
In order to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, a number of key strategies will be implemented by the policy in order to reduce nutrition disorders among women, men and children and the promotion of women’s and other vulnerable groups access to and control over agricultural productive resources and technologies for food and nutrition security.
Regarding the reduction of rural poverty, the policy plans to implement the following strategies: (i) promotion of women’s and vulnerable groups’ access to and control over productive resources and economic opportunities, (ii) integration of gender into overall national development policies, programmes and systems of industry and trade sector, (iii) advocate creation of favorable environment for equal employment opportunities and benefits for women and men in both formal and informal sectors, (iv) advocate creation of favorable and safe environment for equal participation of men and women in trade including international trade, (v) promote gender mainstreaming in poverty eradication and economic empowerment structures, systems and programmes.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the following activities will be implemented by the policy: (i) participation and involvement of women, men, girls, boys and vulnerable groups in planning, designing, implementation and evaluation of natural resources, climate change and environmental policies and programmes, (ii) minimisation of negative natural resource, environmental and climate change impacts thereby enhancing environmental benefits of projects to the majority of the vulnerable groups, (iii) enhancement of gender mainstreaming in natural resources, climate change and environmental structures, systems and programmes.
In the context of governance, the institutional framework for implementation of the National Gender Policy will comprise structures and institutions within the public sector, private sector, the civil society including faith and community based organizations and various donors and development partners. These structures and institutions will be under the overall direction of the National Gender Machinery which has the mandate to spearhead the coordination for the implementation of the National Gender Policy. The National Gender Machinery will specifically be responsible for: (i) providing overall policy direction and spearhead and oversee the formulation, implementation and review of the National Gender Policy, (ii) coordinating advocating, lobbying and networking on issues of gender with all sectors, (iii) providing Institutional strengthening and capacity development initiatives that advance gender equality, (iv) mobilizing resources for allocation towards gender mainstreaming and gender activities, (v) providing technical guidance and backstopping services to all sectors including gender training, gender research and analysis and planning skills to build capacity for gender responsive interventions, (vi) establishing and maintaining a gender resource centre.