By Sukuoluhle Ndlovu
Masvingo – Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCOZ) Masvingo Chapter is working tirelessly to ensure meaningful women’s participation in governance form grassroot structures.
This was said by WCOZ Masvingo Chapter Chairperson, Belinda Mwale during a meeting recently.
Non –state actors were part of the discussion under a project called SWAG.
The SWAG campaign seeks to strengthen women’s advocacy for inclusive governance.
“This aim, aims to increase women’s participation in electoral processes at local and national levels governance. So what we want to do is to increase women’s participation either in the governance or the electoral field.
We are going to do this by making sure we increase women leadership visibility,” said Mwale.
Lack of information is making women lag behind.
“Unequal access to information is also an underlying factor distributing to low participation. There are a lot of things both men and women need to learn when it comes to participation. Information is power which makes access to information become empowerment. There is need to make a deliberate effort by women to access information so that they engage in discussions that matter,” she said.
Mwale said there is need to identify women with interest in electoral ambitions and prepare for 2023.
The media was urged to play its crucial role in profiling women in positive light.
“It is a good idea for the media to do profiles and there are challenges being faced are that other women in top positions are not willing to talk, at times is will be a simple comment which does not even need protocol and this then makes it difficult for them to be written about,” said Hazvinei Mwanaka.
Theresa Takafuma added, “One thing we need to understand is that sometimes media feels it has no obligation to push the woman’s cause and therefore it is up to women to make waves and make it difficult for the media to ignore them as they know the media has to sell and us as women if we do not work towards that, we are not going to get it on a silver platter.”
