THERE is urgent need for stakeholders to review and effectively address the root causes of sharp declines in the number of women participating in local political processes, electoral expert and Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) director Rindai Chipfunde-Vava has said.
Although the national Constitution provides for equal participation of men and women in political processes, there has been a drop in female participation, particularly over the past three electoral cycles.
Compared to the 2018 harmonized elections, the participation of women fell significantly last year from 19% to 8% in the presidential race, 15% to 11% for the National Assembly while women participation in council elections dropped from 17% to 15.1%.
Addressing journalists on the sidelines of ZESN’s Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections (BRIDGE) workshop in Harare on Tuesday, Chipfunde-Vava said last year’s polls served as wake-up call to urgently devise strategies to achieve gender parity in politics before the next cycle.
“We have done similar programs before but this time we said the earlier the better since we saw a decline in terms of the number of women participating (in the 2023 harmonized elections), it’s better to strategize, look at what happened, the barriers, and try to address them on time,” she said.
Themed “Gender Equality and Elections”, the three-day workshop hosted by ZESN in partnership with the UN Women Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Gender Commission, has drawn participants from Chapter 12 institutions including Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) as well as civic society.
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“This particular course is going to look at global practices in terms of gender equality and also the challenges, barriers faced in other parts of the world and strategies which were used to overcome and ensure that women do get into electoral processes,” Chipfunde-Vava said.
Since its inception in 2002, the international BRIDGE programme has made a global impact, training over 19 000 facilitators worldwide and is renowned for its modular professional development approach, with a laser focus on upholding electoral integrity.
“The BRIDGE training is a worthwhile investment in strengthening stakeholders to identify inequalities, discrimination and unbalanced power relations in the electoral process and seeks to support strategies promoting gender equality and women’s participation in the electoral process,” UN Women Zimbabwe governance advisor Fadzai Chatiza-Traquino said.
“UN Women supports global, regional and country initiatives in the area of women’s political participation with the aim of strengthening women’s leadership and ensuring women’s full and equal access to decision making.”