ABSTRACT
This chapter explores factors that helped African women in Malawi to suffer less from psychological distress than men during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the traditional roles of African women, namely caring for the sick, would have posed a greater danger to women than men during COVID-19. The accumulated evidence also suggests that more women than men died of COVID-19 in Malawi. Globally this is not well understood. The chapter rests on African feminist theory, according to which experiences of men and women are viewed in the light of the inequalities between women and men, and grounded theory, which argues that indigenous knowledge drives the development of the themes. Data for this research were collected using an ethnographic methodology. The study found that women were less distressed than men because of certain factors, such as less involvement in religious and traditional leadership roles than men, and women’s traditional role of caring for the sick being taken away due to government policy of placing COVID-19 patients in isolation. The chapter contributes to the academic argument that women are not always more disadvantaged than men.
