MARTIN MAWAYA
GWERU-Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) has urged political parties to level the playing field to ensure more participation of women at local government level.
This comes after the women candidates in local government declined from 17 percent in 2018 to 14 percent for August 23 polls.
Only 665 women candidates are contesting for seats in the 92 local authorities.
Speaking at the Media Election Reporting training organized by the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) last Friday, WCoZ Midlands coordinator Locadia Mavhudzi said women participation in this year’s elections is very low as compared to 2018.
“In the local authority elections, 665 women will be contesting as candidates against 3940 men. Overall, 14% of the candidates in this election are women compared to 17% in the previous election.
“The contesting political parties listed 1336 women who will be vying for 30% local government quota seats. The quota system guarantees women 561 seats in council which translates to at least 23% of 1570 available seats,” she said.
She added that women in politics are hamstrung by a number of factors that limit their participation in politics.
Mavhudzi highlighted that “gender sensitive media monitoring can help identify inequalities between men and women in election coverage, quantifying the space and time received by men and women candidates, as well as the importance given to gender equality among other programmatic issues”.
“Capacity building and training initiatives addressed to journalists and media professionals can contribute to raise awareness on the importance of gender in elections and help them improve their skills on gender- sensitive reporting,” added Mavhudzi.
The WCoZ coordinator urged the media to practice peace journalism and unearth underlying violence faced by women political candidates.
