adminequality and women empowerment.
Representatives from the education sector said women’s involvement dwindles as the level of education goes up.
Other women including those in the HIV and Aids sector, women with disabilities and media cited exclusion in empowerment programmes as compared to their male counterparts.
Gender activist Ms Virginia Muwaningwa said affirmative action was a temporary measure meant to realise certain objectives. Citing an example of affirmative action in political circles, Ms Muwaningwa said it was expected to be implemented for two parliamentary terms after which women were expected to get equal representation as their male counterparts.
“Affirmative action is temporary. It’s only meant to realise certain goals after which results should start showing,” she said.
United Nations women representative in Zimbabwe, Ms Hodan Addou said although progress had been made in achieving the goal, there was still a huge disparity between women in rural and those in urban areas.
She said there was evidence that women in urban areas had more opportunities than those in rural areas.
“Women in rural areas lag behind in all aspects of equality and empowerment compared to those in urban areas,” she said.
The UN has started measuring progress towards achieving all the MDGs as countries are left with less than 1 000 days to meet the deadline.
2015 is the deadline for making progress towards agreed global targets.
The public forum was facilitated by the United Nations to deliberate on issues surrounding achievement of Millennium Development Goal number three, which talks of gender equality and women empowerment.
According to the UN, the aim of the forums was to increase public awareness and engagement on issues under deliberation. About 60 people from different sectors participated in the deliberations.
Online Reporter