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Elita Chikwati Herald Reporter
Women’s Affairs and Gender Development Minister, Oppah Muchinguri said the ministry will soon come up with a gender commission to ensure gender balance in all sectors.Minister Muchinguri said the commission will work towards attaining 50: 50 percent gender representation in decision-making positions.
“In all sectors, we will be looking at the distribution of positions. We expect at least equal representation in decision-making positions in the industry, private or public sector,” she said.
Minister Muchinguri said the next five years will be of hard work to ensure women empowerment.
“The road can be rough during the next five years but we will pursue our goals. We started with enacting the domestic violence Act and now we are marching towards ensuring equal representation of gender in all industries,” she said.
On the number of female members of cabinet, Minister Muchinguri said women have not lost on fighting on equal representation.
She said the women constituted 35 percent of the cabinet and this was not a bad figure.
Minister Muchinguri said she was proud that Zimbabwe had matured as a country and as a people.
She said that she hoped the whole nation was going to come together and observe these dictates because the country could not behind other Sadc member countries.
“We have the Sadc gender policy in place which requires 50 -50 percent gender representation across the board. I am saying to Zimbabwe we have done well in parliament and we need to move forward.
“The nation must rise to the occasion now. There can be development without woman participation. Now we are educated and have attained more than 95 percent literacy so there cannot be any excuse whatsoever. We have the pre-requisite educational background and am calling those in authority to take heed of the dictates of the constitution,” she said.
As part of efforts to strike gender parity in decision making, the new constitution had a provision for 60 parliamentary seats reserved for women.
The Senate however fell short of one to achieve 50-50 representation in the Upper House after they secured 39 out of 80, the total number that constitute Senators.
Online Reporter