How Women Can Lift Malawi Out of Poverty

Dec 18, 2019 | Sarah Chabane
View Original

More than half of the agricultural labour force in Malawi are women. However, they rarely get their fair share for the hard work they do in the fields – female farmers earn three times less than their male compatriots. Women’s rights to access advanced agricultural tools and larger land plots are limited, which results in lower productivity of their farms. And with agriculture accounting for about one-third of the country’s GDP, gender inequality is holding Malawi back.

So, improving productivity among female farmers can step forward Malawi’s development and address its staggering poverty levels. But how to do that? Anderson Gondwe (Center of Social Research at the University of Malawi) explores in a policy brief, produced with support from AgriFoSe 2030.