Parly Speaker urges 50/50 political participation

Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu, Senior Reporter
THERE is a need to foster increased women political participation in Zimbabwe as statistics show that only a handful have been able to assume leadership roles.

This is a far cry from the United Nations 50/50 target for equal representation in decision making positions.

This emerged during a Portfolio Committee on Women Affairs, Community and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Development workshop where Speaker of Parliament, Advocate Jacob Mudenda, called for a strategy towards achieving the 50-50 gender parity representation and empowerment in politics.

“The just-ended Parliamentary and Council by-elections held in the various constituencies call for a dispassionate analysis of the level of participation by the women in the political arena for which I vouch is less than 20 percent!” he said.

“The committee must, therefore, be introspective in finding out why there continues to be such low uptake of politics by our womenfolk.

“Such findings should enable the committee to come up with practical strategic interventions, which should remedy the situation in the medium term. They should look at the various political party constitutions and check if they espouse gender parity in the selection of candidates who intend to contest elections.”

Adv Mudenda said political party primary elections should be analysed if they foster gender parity so that women come on board.

“Need I extol you that the harmonised elections are beckoning in 2023 and that it is appropriate for you to engage right away all critical stakeholders and stockholders so that you can strike a meeting of minds in coming up with decisive strategies to remedy the glaring gap in gender equality.”

According to Adv Mudenda, poverty eradication will help women participate in politics especially those in rural areas where an overwhelming majority of women face challenges in accessing socio-economic service delivery.

He called for the enactment of legislation that guarantees equal access to opportunities such as education, financial resources and equal protection under the law.

“Despite the existence of international and regional gender equality treaties and commitments, women are still widely perceived as less capable of serving in leadership positions,” said Adv Mudenda.

“This misconception should change and that paradigm shift of the mindset can only be fostered by the women here present and the womenfolk at large,” he said.

“This is especially so given that Zimbabwe is a State party to most of these international and regional conventions that provide for women empowerment and the attendant gender equality.”

According to the first Women’s Political Participation (WPP) Africa Barometer 2021, women constitute 24 percent (24 percent) of the 12,113 parliamentarians in Africa with 25 percent in the Lower Houses and 20 percent in the Upper Houses of Parliament.

“The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) 2022 Report says since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, women’s representation in Parliament at the global level, has recorded sluggish growth moving from 15 percent to 25 percent,” he said.

“This means women’s representation has been moving at a snail’s pace of 0,4 percent per year. At this dismal rate, it would take 50 years to achieve gender parity if no drastic measures are undertaken worldwide to accelerate the pace.”

Despite the Constitutional provisions in Section 17 and Section 80, which demand gender balance in both the private and public sectors, Adv Mudenda said, gender inequality still exists in Zimbabwe.

“The enduring gender inequalities in politics are a result of a wide range of barriers that limit women’s entry into politics. Primary obstacles are those associated with traditional gender roles, gender-based stereotypes, discriminatory attitudes and the patriarchal nature of politics,” he said.

“Given that these barriers are many and interconnected, this workshop is, therefore, challenged to recommend strategies to overcome these obstacles and achieve increased women representation in the short to medium term timescale as hinted to earlier on.” — @thamamoe