AbstractThe challenge of introducing greater equity into a society as unequal and as poor as Malawi's has become is a daunting one. It involves nothing less than attempting to commence the reversal of a historic process that originates in the colonial system of production and has continued, even intensified, during three decades of political independence. In that process a very small elite arrogated all of the major components of political power and economic privilege. Attempting to restore, even to a limited degree, fairness in the distribution of assets and opportunities to such a society involves numerous, complex, and sometimes contradictory, sets of questions and responses. It also requires an unpackaging of the notion of ‘equity’ and the category of‘women’. This article sets out to explore some of those questions from a management perspective. First, in order to demonstrate the complexity and scale of the problem, as well as the limits of this particular experiment with reform, it will provide a brief historic background to the present structure and dynamic of Malawian agriculture. Second, it will, even more briefly, explain US AID's Agricultural Sector Assistance Programme (ASAP), which sought to alter in a modest way some of the major elements of agricultural inequity in Malawi. Third, it will analyse some of the procedural and management dilemmas confronting the programme. And, finally, it will set out some principles for responding to these management p