SOME women have described the constitutional provision that allots 60 parliamentary seats to women as flawed, arguing it is not producing the optimum intended results for real empowerment.
BY OBEY MANAYITI
Speaking at an Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) Conversations on Gender Equality Progress in the New Constitution on the Women Quota yesterday, various speakers said apart from giving all the seats under the system to political parties, it was ideal to rope in experts in different fields.
Others said women were now being treated as a special group of people, who were in Parliament because of the benevolence of men and not through merit.
Goromonzi legislator, Beatrice Nyamupinga said the quota system was an opportunity to rope in academics and experts so that they would give voice to women and compete for powerful positions in the country using Parliamentary seats.
“We also need technocrats. I think you heard the President in 2013, he spoke of the issue of not appointing Cabinet ministers because he didn’t see those qualified women,” she said.
“For you academia and legal advisers, you didn’t play your part because you should have advised us that what should we put under the 60 seats, what role are they expected to play by the community and who are we looking for, which women are we looking for.
“Are we looking for political party women or are we looking for academics? What gap do we want to fill?”
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Nyamupinga said it was time to take stock of the achievements that had been brought by the quota system.
Tsitsi Mutasa weighed in, saying sometimes women under the quota system were being belittled because of how they were elected.
She said there were many capable women in Zimbabwe, who needed to take up the challenge and be involved in matters of nation building.
ZimPF official, Margaret Dongo said women should not repeat the same mistakes they made after the liberation struggle, when the majority of them went home to leave politics to their male counterparts, who equally, had challenges in running the country.
Various women also spoke on the need to ensure fair representation at local government level or considering introducing the quota system there.
Some said it would be ideal to include young girls in capacity training so that they become focused and break the assumption that they are inferior to men.
The programme was supported by Hivos and the Netherlands embassy.
AMH are the publishers of NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard.
