Growing up in the Blantyre city of Malawi in the late 80s and early 90s, women/mothers were mainly concerned with child care and home management. The few that ventured into professional careers often combined professional and traditional responsibilities, such as coming home to cook after knocking off from work, doing household chores on the weekend, and working in the office during the week. While more and more women empowered themselves at the turn of the 21st century, the majority of women in Malawi have not abandoned their traditional roles. The traditional caregiving, home-making, and nurturing roles of women in the Malawian family, which form the basis of their identity as wives and mothers across Africa, have remained relatively unchanged even as the women have become increasingly involved in professional roles and relationships outside the home.[1]
In traditional African societies, the survival, continuation, and future of the family set-up and its cultural values depend significantly on the woman. The African woman plays a crucial role in imparting social, ethical, and moral values to the children, which are part of the cultural standards for evaluating proper societal behavior.[2] For Malawian women, for example, the responsibilities of childcare and home management confer on them the responsibility to instill the family’s as well as the community’s core values, beliefs, and behavior to ensure that a child grows up to be a productive citizen. It is essential to highlight that the role of imparting values, beliefs, and behavior is not restricted to one’s household. Women are commonly witnessed advising and reprimanding neighbors’ children, all with the aim of having an orderly society. As Suda stipulates in her article, the female influence on the moral character of African society is arguably one of the most enduring marks in the history of humanity; part of the reason for this is women’s traditional care-giving roles, which put them in a unique and strategic position not only to produce and sustain life but also to help instill socio-religious values and morals in the family and society as a basis for establishing good and appropriate relationships between members.[3] Such is the influence of the African and, more specifically, Malawian women on her society that she can influence religious, political, and moral change.
In the majority of households, a lot of practices are introduced and enforced or forbidden by the woman. Practices such as going to church, non-use of vulgar language, taking off shoes at the main door, taking care of one’s bedding, and kneeling or sitting down while speaking to elders. The same applies to the behavior of using single-use plastics. In an average household in Malawi, the woman is responsible for making purchases on behalf of the whole household, and that is where she gets the SUPs in the form of carrier bags, straws, disposable cups, etc. When she wants to send out members of the household on an errand, she is the one who hands out plastic carrier bags. The power for her and the whole household to stop using SUP rests within her.
Impact of Plastic Waste on Malawian Women
The presence of plastic waste in the environment has had a lot of negative effects on human life. It is a fact that plastic waste, which mostly comprises single-use plastics, is a health threat to humans as well as other living organisms present in the environment. The plastic waste that has made its way into water bodies and terrestrial environments has broken down into particles and chemicals that have been absorbed into the soil, water, and air, thereby making these elements and any products from them hazardous to human health.[4] Plastic chemicals and particles have been proven to be toxic, so much so that they cause lung, gut, and brain injury in humans.[5]
In addition to the above findings, Scientists and environmentalists have also proven that plastics contribute to climate change. The very nature of plastic production requires energy-intensive processes to turn oil into gas[6], thereby producing a high amount of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and, consequently, climate change disasters such as floods and droughts.
According to The Malawi Country Climate and Development Report published by the World Bank[7]and Mellisa Godin[8], women are the most affected by climate change disasters in Malawi. In 2019, 60 people were killed as a result of Cyclone Idai, and 672 people were injured. 868,900 people were affected overall, with 76,831 people displaced. Of those displaced, 59 percent were female, and 58 percent were under 18. 5,136 pregnant and lactating women were affected.[9] They are displaced, left without food and shelter for themselves and their children, and when they try to acquire the same, they are too often subjected to sexual and gender-based violence in numerous forms, pushing them further into poverty and destitution.
Being the primary caregivers, Malawian women are the worst affected by disease, floods, and droughts that are caused by single-use plastics. When a family member falls sick, the woman has the responsibility to nurse the person, thereby losing other economic opportunities by staying at home. When there is inadequate food, women will engage in different efforts to secure food for the family along with the husband. When floods hit, women are the most disadvantaged as they have to fend for themselves as well as their children.
Being the largest section that is greatly affected by the side effects of plastic waste and simultaneously being the biggest influencers of change and choices at a household level, women are the missing arsenal in the fight against SUP, whether by recycling or reducing plastic waste production.
Malawian Women in the Plastic Recycling Industry
In Malawi, it is a typical scene to find women at dumpsites scouring through waste to get plastic materials that they can resale to recycling companies. According to Sally Nyakanyanga,[10] women in Zimbabwe and Malawi are taking action to tackle the plastic waste crisis by collecting plastic waste from dumpsites and communities and reselling it to recycling companies. It is essential to highlight that the women’s motivation to collect the discarded plastics is for financial benefit[11] and not to reduce the occurrence of plastic waste in the environment. It must be highlighted here that women are not driven by the need to remove plastic waste from the environment. As such, they only recycle, enabling them to get money and buy food for that particular day. The motivation for recycling (financial) is short-term and at a small scale. If the women were aware of the substantial adverse effects of plastic waste on the environment, their motivation would change, and they would recycle on a larger scale.
Women are the Missing Link
Women need to be at the forefront of the plastic war by empowering them with adequate and detailed knowledge of plastics, how they contribute to adverse weather patterns and contribute to human diseases, and the need to ban them entirely. For instance, if a woman knows how greenhouse gases are produced and contribute to adverse weather conditions, which conversely affects the woman in the form of droughts, floods, and diseases, the woman then will use her power and influence to impart such knowledge to members of their family and community. Thus, the war on a total ban on single-use plastics shall be won. Further, she will be the first one to boycott the use of single-use plastics and encourage members of her household to do the same. When a woman understands that it is in her best interest to curb single-use plastic pollution to prevent disasters brought about by SUP that negatively affect her well-being, the SUP battle will be won. With all their influence (refer to the discussion above) and their negative experience from climate change-induced disasters, impoverished ordinary women are the change agents we need in the fight against single-use plastics.
[1] Suda, C., ‘The centrality of women in the moral teachings in African society’ (1996) 5(2) Nordic Journal of African Studies 71, 71.
[2] Afisi, O.T., ‘Power and womanhood in Africa: An introductory evaluation’ (2010) 3 (6) The Journal of Pan African Studies 229,230.
[3] Suda, C., ‘The centrality of women in the moral teachings in African society’ (1996) 5(2) Nordic Journal of African Studies; 71,72.
[4] Vethaak AD, Leslie HA. ‘Plastic Debris Is a Human Health Issue’, Environment Science Technology Journal. 2016 Jul 5;50(13).
[5] Proshad, R et al, ‘Toxic effects of plastic on human health and environment: Consequences of health risk assessment in Bangladesh, International Journal of Health, 6 (1) (2018) 1-5.
[6] Proshad, R et al, ‘Toxic effects of plastic on human health and environment: Consequences of health risk assessment in Bangladesh, International Journal of Health, 6 (1) (2018) 1-5.
[7] Narain, U et al., https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099545010272237260/p1772201ced75ce9182e7142761bde013662bca4fe42 , accessed 17 November 2023.
[8] Mellisa Godin, Climate Change Is Creating a New Atmosphere of Gender Inequality for Women in Malawi, Teen Vogue Newsletter (2018).
[9] UN Women: Women’s Resilience to Disasters Knowledge Hub; The gender and age dimensions of floods and drought in Malawi: Understanding the gender and age inequalities of risk, https://wrd.unwomen.org/explore/insights/gender-and-age-dimensions-floods-and-drought-malawi, accessed 17 November 2023.
[10] Nyakanyanga, S, On the Agenda / Plastics and the Environment | World Economic Forum (weforum.org), accessed 17 November 2023.
[11] Mwale, F, Trash for Cash: Blantyre women earning money from recycling plastic (2022), https://awimnews.com/trash-for-cash-blantyre-women-earning-money-from-recycling-plastic/, accessed 17 November 2023.
