Women-led CSOs decry poor women representation
Fiona Mpofu
Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (WILD) and Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE) are concerned by the low number of women vying for political office in the aftermath of candidate nomination.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) released the nomination results which revealed that there is no woman among the eleven presidential candidates and only 11% of those who successfully filed nomination papers for the National Assembly were women.
This figure represents a decline from the 14.4% of successfully nominated females for the National Assembly, and 4 female Presidential candidates in the 2018 election.
According to WALPE the failure by the two leading political parties to field more than 12% women ( ZANU-PF has 23 female candidates while CCC has 20 female candidates) shows their failure to adhere to the 2005 SADC Protocol on Gender and Development adopted in 2013, which aimed at attaining 50/50 representation in public and private decision making by 2015.
In it’s press release, WILD highlighted that the exclusion of women in political processes is destructive to democracy and in the fight to eradicate gender inequalities.
“The gender of legislators has a distinct impact on their political priorities, making it crucial that women are present in political life to represent the concerns of women, marginalised groups and communities, to improve the responsiveness of social policy, development and governance,” said WILD.
WILD called to attention some of the hindrances to the political participation of women and these include “cultural and societal norms, limited access to education, socio-economic disparities, and structural barriers within political parties and steep nomination fees.”
The organisation went on to suggest efforts at strengthening support networks, ensuring equal access to resources, creation of enabling environments, engagement of men as allies, strengthening of data monitoring and evaluation to increase the numbers of women in politics.
WALPE called on the implementation of targeted awareness campaigns to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes that hinder women’s political participation stereotypes, education and sensitization efforts aimed at both women and men to foster a culture of gender equality.
