Diana Nherera

Harare Mayor Councillor Jacob Mafume has called for a review of the City of Harare’s policies to promote greater gender inclusivity, including increasing the representation of women in senior management positions.

Speaking during a Female Mentors Programme in Harare on Thursday, Cllr Mafume said the city should ensure more women are appointed to executive roles, particularly at director level.

He noted that the City of Harare currently has no female directors, underscoring the need for deliberate measures to improve gender balance in leadership.

“I know the city council is one of the most male centred organisation, which is very unfair to women,” he said.

“There are limited chances of having women in senior positions, and when they do try, they run into serious political and administrative headwinds.

“It’s easier for a young man to rise in the system than for female senior managers and other female employees.

“So it’s a very, very difficult environment and I can attest to that. I have even approached certain female managers to be acting town clerk and other positions, and they would decline the offer. But it’s the environment; the higher you go, the more difficult it becomes in terms of the pressures.

He said the pressure is not confined to the organisation alone but also comes from external sources.

“We interact with a lot of stakeholders; political parties, the executive ministries, ministers, and others,” he said.

“The more you get promoted, the more pressure you feel. Sometimes the attacks come informally, formally and from the media.

“There is heightened attention on one’s style of leadership and tactics that they use to remain at the top and sometimes these are not user-friendly for female managers.

“Be that as it may, we need to identify the systemic issues and we uproot them one by one.”

He said one of the systemic approaches is to adopt a quota system with its merits and demerits, especially for the director’s posts.

He proposed having a benchmark of one in every three directors being a woman as the barest minimum with a clear roadmap to increasing the ratio to 50 percent in due course.