Women momentum transforming sporting landscape

For decades, Malawi’s sporting fields whether football grounds, netball courts, or quiet administrative offices, have reflected a familiar pattern: men at the centre, women at the margins.

According to the Malawi National Council of Sports, deep rooted gender bias has been a persistent obstacle across many sporting institutions.

Women still navigate intimidation, underestimation and lack of structural support. Budget allocation for women’s programmes remains thin.

According to the Gender, Participation and Leadership in Sport in Southern Africa: the 2021 Study by the African Union Sports Council Region 5, entrenched cultural and institutional gender biases still hold women back in sports leadership.

Women making it into leadership seats remain blocked by norms that insist they stay silent or modest.

The tide is however turning because women themselves are turning it.

Malawian women are creating the spaces they were once denied. They are shaping policies, influencing national programmes, and steering the future of their sports.

Across the sports landscape, on courts, pitches, offices, and federation floors, Malawian women are doing more than participating: they are leading.

Their actions challenge a long-held myth that leadership in sport is a man’s domain.

Across the country, that pattern is rapidly changing. Women are no longer waiting for permission, programs, or slower institutional reforms.

They are taking charge, stepping into leadership, reshaping governance, and claiming space in a sports sector that was never designed with them in mind.

From national associations to grassroots clubs, Malawian women are leading their own sports revolution, one decision, one programme, and one young girl at a time.

Nthombizana Thindwa, Chairperson for Women in Sports Commission under the Malawi National Council of Sports, has a front-row seat to this transformation.

“We have seen a lot of changes,” she says, reflecting on a sector that once sidelined women almost entirely.

“Currently in netball we have got a woman president and now we have seen a woman who is in the driving seat and making a lot of changes. Sponsorship has been coming in, netball is on the map again.”

Her excitement is rooted in tangible progress, corporate support, renewed visibility, and unprecedented administrative influence. And it’s not just netball.

“In hockey, volleyball, judo, karate, we’ve seen a lot of women coming in too,” she explains.

Recently, Women in Sports Commission trained and graduated 27 women leaders, aged 25 to 35, under a Region 5 programme aimed at building capacity and confidence among emerging female decision-makers.

“What we are trying to do is build capacity so that they can take leadership roles,” Thindwa says. “Our main agenda is better women representation… to make athletes more comfortable with fellow women in leadership.”

Yet her vision is candid about the gaps: “There is little representation of women in decision-making positions,” she insists, “We need resources, we need awareness, and we need women to know they can lead.”

For Adelaide Migogo, Chairperson of the National Women’s Football Association, progress has not come without resistance.

“Men underrate us because we are ladies,” she says bluntly. “They believe that a girl child should always be in the kitchen or think we go into football for hidden agendas. It’s tricky, and we are fighting that.”

But Migogo’s journey is anchored in confidence shaped by her upbringing.

“It started from my house,” she recalls. “My mother used to believe in me. So it clicked from day one that I can do everything a woman can do.”

Her message to Malawian girls and women is firm.

“Whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. They should not fear, they should not be intimidated. Men in nature are intimidators so move forward.”

Women like Felister Dossi, Football Association of Malawi (FAM) Executive Committee Member, are part of this new frontier challenging long standing assumptions about who belongs in sports governance.

“The change is happening, but it is gradual,” she says. “Every woman who takes up a position in football chips away at the belief that leadership belongs to men. And eventually, those cracks become an opening for the next generation.”

Sports analysts say this wave of women’s leadership is not a coincidence but a part of a global shift.

“It’s a very positive development,” says sports analyst Mwakhale Kaliyande, “Sports has always been male-dominated. So having women rise to such positions is momentum that cannot go unnoticed.”

She notes that women are no longer included just to “tick the box,” but because they are proving their capabilities domestically and internationally.

“Netball, football, athletics, we’ve got women leading in all these. Female athletes like the Chawinga sisters, Tabitha and Temwa,  are getting global recognition. It shows what women can achieve when given space.”

Kaliyande believes Malawi is making progress, but warns that the fight is far from over.

“If we wait for a seat at the table, we might wait forever. Women must rise up and take the lead.”

Sports analyst Tadala Manda echoes this.

“Women are breaking norms in positions that were usually for the males,” she says. “We’re seeing real leadership, not symbolic representation. But Malawi can do more, we must stop making women prove themselves over and over again.”

For Thindwa’s commission, this is a priority.

“We want girls to be comfortable,” she says. “We want them to know they can take these positions.”

As Migogo puts it simply

“We can do it. They can do it. I’ve done it.”

And across the country, more women are doing it every day, ushering in a sports revolution that is undeniably, unapologetically, and powerfully theirs.

Despite the hurdles, women continue to reshape the sporting landscape with determination that cannot be overlooked.

Their leadership, from boardrooms to community pitches, is slowly but unmistakably undoing decades of exclusion.

Each woman who takes a step forward pushes the entire system with her, proving that progress in sport does not come from permission, but from persistence.

Their resilience is building foundations for a sport sector that is more inclusive, more dynamic, and rooted in fairness.

As more women occupy decision-making positions, mentor young athletes, and challenge old norms, Malawi inches closer to a sporting ecosystem where leadership is measured not by gender, but by vision, capacity, and courage.

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