BY CHIPILIRO KANSILANGA

Women aspirants in next year’s general elections will now be confident to face the electorates, following an initiative to drill them on how to campaign effectively in order to win the elections.

Gender Support Programme National Director Cecilia Mussa said Sunday her organisation was busy sourcing funds for a special programme to coach women on skills that would enable them campaign effectively and win the elections.

“We will coach them on public speaking, lobbying and campaign skills so that they should ably express their ideas and strategies to the electorates,” she said.

Mussa said the special coaching programme, funded by Norad, would not consider political party inclinations because it only aims at achieving a 50/50 representation in Parliament.

“All we want to achieve is a 50/50 representation in the National Assembly, so as long as the aspirant is a woman, then she qualifies for this programme,” said Mussa, adding that concentration would be on women who have already qualified for primary elections.

A needs assessment programme through NGO Gender Coordination Network is also underway to implement projects that support all initiatives aimed at increasing the number of women aspirants, according to Mussa.

The support network is also expected to meet all political parties and lobby them to create more room for women to take part in the elections.

No political party has come out with tangible plans on how to accommodate more women in the coming general elections.

Currently, only 27 of the 193 MPs are women.

Mussa claimed that women were better leaders than men, because a lot of development projects such as roads, water, schools and hospitals had a direct bearing on their lives.

She cited the Water Bill that was shot down by Parliament in May as an example where a higher representation of women would have mattered.

“I believe if we had a lot of women in Parliament, that bill would have passed because women understand the importance of such basic necessities than men.

“It’s women who go to the maize mill, fetch water, look for the sick in hospitals and this makes them appreciate the plight of other women when they get into the realms of power,” she said.

Gender experts in the country have said if women representation in decision-making was increased, chances of Malawi achieving the 30 percent Sadc declaration, would be high.

The declaration was instituted in 2002 but only Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa have met the target.

The experts have also pointed out that for the declaration targets to be achieved, the private sector must work hard on placing more women in strategic positions.

According to the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS), large disparities exist between men and women, although women constitute 51 percent of the population.

Lower education levels for women is also said to be one of the major causes of lower participation in many areas of development.