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Joyce Banda

66 quotes

“I don’t like affirmative action because it is like eating raw meat. Even though the numbers are good, it is a shortcut, you haven’t been cooked or grilled.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)
“Being a woman has made it tougher, but it has not stopped me. I still got there. You still make inroads and you make a lot of friends. Although it is tougher being a woman in politics, you need to be determined to stay the course.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)
“It works better when you are a servant leader, when you fall in love with your people and them with you. If you truly believe that you need to change the situation of your people, regardless of how rocky the road is, you’ll walk it for the people that you serve.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)
“My advice to anyone wanting to get into politics is to first analyse themselves to see if they are a leader or not. If you are a leader and you want to serve your people and you can be a servant leader, then go for it.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)
“First, what we have found in Africa as challenges for women seeking to stand for elected office are a lack of economic empowerment. To be able to compete on equal ground with men, women [need to have] economic empowerment themselves to move into politics. About four or five of us that were in the National Association of Business Women ended up in government. There’s that stubborn link between having money and standing for office. In Malawi, there is no affirmative action. The second is lack of appropriate training designed [for]African women, because of our cultural environment that we have to compete and campaign in. The third is the abuse women get [while] campaigning and the negative media that happens when women are campaigning. That is also discouraging women – professional women – from running for office because they see how we are treated, names that we are called, the scandals, and they feel that it’s not worth it. So they don’t run.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BPR Interviews: Dr. Joyce BandaBrown Political Review(November 13, 2016)
“What I see and what I’m advocating, is for us to find ways of supporting as many women as possible in participating in leadership and decision-making. When women get into positions of leadership, in any sector and at any level, they focus more on issues that affect women and children. When I became head of state, the first program I created – before I even established a cabinet – was to establish the Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health and Safe Motherhood. When women get into leadership, one, they focus more on social issues, and two, they take risks: They do things differently, [and] they are not afraid. It’s not about the power; it’s about serving people. [Women] will take risks for the benefit of the people that they serve. Women leaders appoint fellow women to positions of leadership. When I became president, I appointed the first [female] chief justice, the first head of civil service, the first solicitor general, two governors of the reserve bank, and seven district commissioners.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BPR Interviews: Dr. Joyce BandaBrown Political Review(November 13, 2016)
“In dealing with maternal mortality, I’ve not only been involved with the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health. In fact, the reason why I was asked to serve is because of the work I’ve done in reproductive health. But I must say that I’ve been very, very fortunate in my life that all the things that I’ve championed have originated from personal experience. I almost died giving birth to my fourth-born child. I suffered what they call postpartum hemorrhage. From then on, I decided that I was going to spend my life fighting this unnecessary death of women giving life. What I have learned is that some of the reasons why these women die are very simple to correct. I think that everybody in leadership must give women a chance to [experience] motherhood and enjoy better health. But in any case, [maternal health] is one of the [UN] Sustainable Development Goals. So it is important for us to achieve that. The tragedy is that during the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), we didn’t achieve two goals that have to do with women. I think that is a shame that we didn’t achieve MDG 3, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, or MDG 5, improving maternal health. I feel that it’s necessary for us to achieve that. It’s not fair that women should die giving birth, not when other parts of the world are enjoying total freedom from death and so on.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BPR Interviews: Dr. Joyce BandaBrown Political Review(November 13, 2016)
“I started by forming an organization to assist fellow women as a result of the fact that I myself had spent 10 years in an abusive marriage. I realized that economic empowerment for women was key to social and political empowerment. I’ve spent my life before politics forming an organization that addresses issues affecting women and girls. [I founded] the National Association of Business Women in Malawi, which provided micro-financing to 15,000 women. Next, [I founded] the Young Women Leaders Network, which mobilized young women and served as a one-stop destination for the government to appoint young women into positions of leadership. Then, in 1997, I received the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger [from] the New York Hunger Project. I spent many years as the national advisor of its program in Malawi. My final project was the Joyce Banda Foundation [beginning in 2010].”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“The Joyce Banda Foundation has five pillars. First, income into the household, believing that if the household gets income through the woman, the children in that household shall go to school. The second pillar is girls’ education, believing that when girls go to school, they are less likely to marry early, give birth prematurely, and die giving birth. The third pillar is maternal health, specifically related to maternal mortality and HIV in Malawi. The fourth pillar is leadership. I believe that when women get into leadership and are supported to become leaders, they focus more on issues that affect women and girls.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“Finally, the fifth pillar is human rights. This is the cross-cutting pillar into all the other four areas. The right of women to make their income and control it. The right of girls to go to school. The right of women to participate in leadership. I must mention that I have been fortunate in my life that all the four areas that I have championed resulted from personal experience. During my childhood, a very good friend of mine ended up dropping out of school because her family would not risk the six dollars needed to go back to school. At 14 years old, I made up my mind that I was going to spend my life assisting other girls [to complete their educations]. In 1984, I gave birth to my first-born child and almost died giving birth because I suffered postpartum hemorrhage. Maternal health became one of my pillars from that experience.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“I refuse to equate our development in Malawi to foreign aid. I believe truly that we can exit our dependence on foreign aid. We must look to ourselves, into our own country and our own resources. Without dwelling more on the U.S., I can say that even with limited resources, women [in Malawi] are not dying due to a lack of foreign aid, but because of the systems, the traditions, and the beliefs on the ground. Malawi has an 80% percent rural based population. As a result of that, they are very traditional, and some of their traditional beliefs impact maternal health. There are some foods that we cannot eat because we are told we cannot eat them; as a result pregnant women are unhealthy. Beliefs that you can’t talk to anybody else about pregnancy except your mother and mother-in-law mean that women are late going to the hospital if they are in labor. We also don’t have proper roads or ambulances to take these women to the clinic on time.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“When I was in office, we tried to do with what we had. We introduced a program where we engaged these traditional leaders. Traditional leaders, who are mostly men, were seen for the first time on TV discussing ways of avoiding these unnecessary deaths, speaking to their subjects, telling them to deliver in the hospital, banning the delivery of babies by traditional bed-attendants, engaging the private sector to build holding shelters at the hospitals. We loosened the beliefs at the grassroots levels by convincing chiefs to appoint other women in the community. We educated men that they must get involved in the pregnancy of their wives. In almost 24 months, we were able to reduce maternal death from 675 per 100,000 to 460 per 100,000.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“Other than foreign aid, there is so much that our country can do to tackle issues that negatively impact women and children. Our country officially has 2 billion barrels of oil, as well as gas, gold, rubies, etc. We have the fourth largest deposit of rare earth [metals]. All we need to do is focus on exploiting our natural resources for the good of the people. I think the path we should be taking in the developing world, particularly African countries, is not to say, “When are we going to get aid?” or “When are people going to give us money?”—because they are not going to be giving money forever—but rather to say, “What is it that we can do within what we have, with our natural resources?”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“Malawi has all these natural resources: fortunately for us, they have not yet been exploited. I have dreams where one day we shall have diamonds for cash, gold for cash, and rare earth [metals] for cash. A household gets $5,000 a year: the household is clearly informed that those $5,000 are for the education of the children in this household, for better health and food security. That will bring us to the next level of development like we’ve never imagined before. Malawi has tried some of these things. President Bingu wa Mutharika introduced an “input program” where poor people were able to buy subsidized inputs and [Malawi] was able to achieve food security in one year. We know that [food security and girls’ education] can be achieved in my nation, so we are not going to reinvent the wheel. Africa now has a group of leaders that are saying, “Enough is enough—we are not going to accept corruption anymore.” But it’s not easy, it’s hard and I know it because I have lived through it. There is a price to fighting corruption. At the end of the day, still fight because you set a precedent that will be followed by the other presidents to come. When we do that, we shall reserve whatever we have for the benefit of the people that we claim to serve.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Joyce Banda, Former President of MalawiThe Politic(August 6, 2017)
“I have since learned that this is not unique to Malawi, but that it happens all over the world. It is having a real impact because the numbers of women involved in politics is declining in many countries. In countries where there was 30% women’s representation in leaderships, it is now 25% or 20%. In Malawi, it is now 15%, in other countries now 10%. The only exception is in countries where there is affirmative action. It would be interesting to find out why women cannot get elected especially given that the majority of voters (52%) are women. My theory is that it is because women are not voting for other women. Another reason is that women are being put off politics because of the abuse that comes with it.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)
“You have to learn it how to navigate your environment. Men feel nervous, so you have to find a way of massaging that ego. The best way is by engaging and involving men. Many people view me as having very successful working relationships with men. It is because throughout my career I have always been sober about my feminism. I have always said to women that gender equality will not be achieved through antagonising men. Rather you do so by empowering yourself. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way. I used to teach women that it was our time to fight and men reacted badly. They broke into my factory and stole everything.”
Joyce Banda (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview: Malawi’s former President Dr Joyce Banda on life in politicsLSE(November24, 2014)