Commission calls for gender monitoring mechanisms

Farirai Machivenyika

Senior Reporter

The Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) has called on Government and other stakeholders to strengthen monitoring mechanisms to ensure institutional compliance with existing legal provisions that promote gender equality, ZGC chairperson, Mrs Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe has said.

She said this in the executive summary of the 2023 ZGC annual report tabled in parliament recently.

“Based on its findings and experiences in 2023, the ZGC put forward several recommendations to  stakeholders.

“These include urgent action to enact laws and policies promoting gender equality, strengthen monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance, allocate adequate resources to support gender equality initiatives, invest in capacity building for stakeholders, and foster collaboration and partnerships,” she said.

In the report, she said ZGC, in partnership with various organisations, had developed a Women’s Charter ahead of the 2023 harmonised elections calling for an increased participation of women in politics and leadership positions to meet the 50/50 Constitutional provision on equal representation of women and men in politics.

“Some of the issues in the Charter included alignment of the Electoral Act to give powers to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to disqualify political parties that do not adhere to 50/50 as they submit party lists, replacement of first past the post electoral system with proportional representation, alignment of political party Constitutions to the 50/50 Constitutional provisions, enactment of a Gender Equality Act to guarantee the full actualisation of gender equality Constitutional provisions,” she said.

The ZGC also called on political parties to be gender sensitive and inclusive in the selection of candidates while the Political Parties Financing Act needed to be amended to ensure that political parties are obliged to distribute resources to women candidates of all ages and abilities on an equal basis and in equal measure with men.

Turning to sexual harassment at the workplace, the ZGC bemoaned the low levels of awareness of the practice by staffers especially among women who are the victims in most cases.

“Throughout the sessions, the staff expressed the need for the country to ratify and domesticate ILO Convention 190 and enact the sexual harassment law at national level.

“Development of workplace sexual harassment policies with clear reporting procedures and penalties was also recommended,” the report reads.