Politics of Patriarchy in Malawi: Backlash against women‘s movement and political participation

Abstract

Women’s movement’s advocacy in electoral processes in Malawi has been increasing steadily since the resumption of Multiparty democracy in 1994. This growing advocacy has presented striking challenges to men who feel threatened by the attention on women are culturally expected to remain in the margins and socially situated as weapons of power struggles between political powers. Evidence of this was strong in the 2018-2020 electoral cycle in Malawi where women taking part in electoral processes as political candidates, electoral stakeholders and voters were subjected to multiple forms of electoral violence ranging from physical to sexual assaults and rape.
     While countering these forms of violence, the women’s movement found itself in a dilemma that questioned its credibility and created a backlash against the women’s movement from political powers, public institutions, and citizenry. In analysing this backlash, the paper applies the Backlash Hypothesis to discuss the position of the women’s movement in Malawi with reference to political participation, using the gendered electoral violence of the 2019-2020 electoral cycle as a case study.
     The discussion qualitatively argues that women’s cultural expectations and historical political socialization tolerate electoral violence against women and encourage the backlash to women’s political participation that follows women’s attempts at unsettling such socializations. It also proposes strategies for countering this backlash to strengthen the women’s movement in Malawi and seeks to add to the growing body of knowledge in movement building and political advocacy.