Article By: Tenson Zobo
Research Academia’s experts have expressed fear that sex roles discrimination against women and stereotyping, will not help Malawian women to participate in country’s development if relevant authorities will not take charge before it is too late.
The experts were speaking during a press briefing presenting a joint UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Malawi Civil Society Organization (CSOs) shadow report for Malawi 2015, yesterday in Lilongwe.
Lecture for Faculty of Law, Chancellor College Theresa Choma say true advancement towards equity for women requires fundamental social and cultural change.
“The government is entitled to adopt education and public information programs to help eliminate prejudices and current practices that hinder the full operation of the principle of equity of women. It is in this regard that prejudice and stereotyping remain a major challenge for women in the Malawian society hence a need for full government involvement to employ special measures of affirmative action for as long as the inequalities exist to accelerate the de facto equity of women”, she said.
She further, bemoaned the tendency of numerous social, religious, customary and cultural practices promoting the notion of inferiority of women and reinforces superiority of men which compromise 50/50 parity equal participation of women and men campaign.
Country Director Representative for Oxfam Lusungu Dzinkamba supported Chome, arguing that the report seeks the budget to contain a special provision to fund the development and advancement of women respectively.
“As you might be aware Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare from National Budget have an allocation of 0.36 which is inadequate to the MoGCDSW. Thus, among factors of; lack of ample strategies for elimination, prohibiting discrimination against women, cultural and religious practices such as Polygamy and women subordination that affect them negatively funding to specific program remain a chief problem in promoting welfare of women in Malawi”, Cautioned Dzinkambo
She therefore reiterated that the targeted solutions among others employing government to safeguard and protect rights of women in the informal sectors such as domestic workers and human resource to the Legal Aid Bureau for expansion (decentralization) and community outreach programs are of critical significance.
Malawi cannot afford the vulnerable group to continue suffer the pains and consequences of economic crisis despite that financial crisis is worldwide problem. Therefore government should take its active role in prioritizing crucial sector in country’s development.
