Abstract

This study was about women participation and representation in public policy making bodies, that is, at parliament and cabinet. It explains whether women participation and representation matter in public policy making with reference to female MPs and female ministers in Malawi. The study was qualitative and its main population was all female MPs and ministers. However, other groups were also added like senior parliamentary staff, the Office of President and Cabinet and all party whips represented in parliament. These other interviews were carried out in order to get information on how other stakeholders view the performance of female MPs The study purposively and strategically selected these groups to get in depth information. Key informant interviews using interview guides were employed as the main method for collecting data. However, certain information was collected through documents like the hansard and News papers articles. The data has been analysed through process tracing and content analysis. One of the major findings of this study is that although there a lot of interventions from various stakeholders to increase the number of women at these two levels, it is very difficult to achieve the thresholds of women representation as suggested by regional bodies because there are a lot of hurdles. These include culture and tradition, education, resources, electoral system among others. As a result the number of women is still very low and is increasing very slowly averaging 8 percent in every five years. Another finding is that the mere (numerical) presence of women at these two levels has an impact on policy outcomes because there are certain policies which have been brought onto the agenda because of the presence of women. However, women are always made by male dominated political institutions to specialize in feminine areas of policy making. Again the study has found out that female ministers who are also very few as compared to male counterparts are usually relegated to feminine ministries with most of them deputizing. Women also remain greatly underrepresented in various parliamentary committees and the Business committee, which are very important as far as parliamentary work is concerned. Most of them are also relegated to feminine committees. Due to their under-representation, the policy outcomes are affected because they do not take due account of women’s input. Further to this the study has also discovered that party discipline also affects the performance of women as there are certain policies of women concern but were rejected by women themselves because of the stand of their parties. In general women representation and participation in policy making process matters because of not only in what get discussed at these two levels but also in what kind of policies are advanced because the study discovered that there are certain policies which have been advanced by women themselves which ordinarily without the presence of women could not have been on the agenda.

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School	: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Issued Date	: 2010

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