Online Reporter
ALTHOUGH women form a majority of the population of Zimbabwe, and although our Constitution grants full equality to all citizens, for a variety of historical reasons, sometimes reflected in our cultural outlooks, women tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to practical economic advancement.
While no one in the modern world will actively oppose the advancement of women, a lot of support remains as lip service, just words, and myths are allowed to build up, such as women should not be the wealthy face of their family or own more than the basic necessities of life in their own name.
Other myths also abound behind the scenes, suggesting that empowering women will overturn society or that too much empowerment of women is a waste of resources or even that financially backing women is a bad bet, despite the statistics showing that women are far more likely to repay loans and to use resources they are lent more fully, with less waste and less leakage to status symbols.
President Mnangagwa belongs to the political camp that sees empowering women practically, that is coming up with real money and making sure that women have full access to skills training, does revolutionise society, largely by making sure no one is left behind, let alone the half of the population that happens to be female.
There are already a number of special schemes and funds, largely the creation of the Second Republic, that are designed to give women access to resources so they can push ahead.
On Monday President Mnangagwa added to these with a special US$3 million Presidential Women’s Empowerment Fund that will be equally split across all 10 provinces.
This was in addition to the farming and mining equipment, ranging from hoes to vehicles, that the President handed over, again for special access by women who need these practical tools and appliances so they can get on with moving forward.
The theme of the launch of the fund was to use the power of transformed women to transform lives and societies to build up the momentum to the upper middle income society emblazoned in Vision 2030. We need to remember that such a society requires people to be upper middle income as individuals, not just the average for the country.
We certainly do not need a return to colonial inequalities whereby a little under 5 percent of the population had a very good and good life by channelling the wealth created by everyone into their hands. That inequality did not affect the total or the average, but even a casual glance at the country would see that the overwhelming majority were below average because of so much wealth transferred to the minority.
So we have to be reasonably careful that everyone is contributing the individual wealth required that totals the national requirement for Vision 2030, and so that the sort of society we want does encompass all of us, not just the half of us who happen to be male.
Even when we talk about other groups that need to see their development accelerated, such as the youths, we need to remember that half of all younger people are also women.
Sometimes, and the empowerment of women is a good example, we need to shake up our customs and cultures so as to ensure that women are playing a full part in our lives and will continue to do so. In any case, some of the customs and beliefs that denigrate women are colonial and modern additions, and were not part of the original cultural norms, especially in the way they were applied.
The President understands all of this, and his address on the launch of the fund on Monday does contain, as we have come to expect, guidelines on the practical ways of empowering women. These recognise that often women have been excluded from some of the general practical skills training, and that needs to be addressed as well.
In an ideal society, where the work of overcoming past injustice and wrong cultural norms that kept women behind have been successful, there would be no need for special funds or other special ways of pushing for our more equal society. That is why the sections of the Constitution that deal with special extra representation for women are always marked as temporary, since one day they will not be needed.
Women themselves need to react responsibly to the new fund, those who benefit making sure they use the money properly and keep up their repayments so that the next batch of women can benefit sooner. This should not a problem, as we have already noted, since women tend to be a much safer bet when it comes to making loans.
We have also noted that as women move up the financial and business ladders and their standard of living improves, that they tend to use their wealth more constructively. We hear of successful female tobacco farmers, for example, talking about their houses and the schools where they send their children rather than about status symbols such as expensive motor vehicles.
This sort of use of wealth is another reason for making sure that women can move up the ladder and be able to earn and build up their wealth. The rest of us tend to benefit more from how they spend money on practical things that usually have high levels of local content rather than on imported luxuries.
So for all sorts of reasons the new fund needs to succeed along with measures that are already in place and are transforming society by transforming the status of women and making sure that they are not left behind and that the Constitutional guarantees are made magnificent in practice.
