We need a Gender Equality Act to achieve 50/50

National Assembly Representative for Whange Daniel Molokele has demanded that Zimbabwe should enact the Gender Equality Act if it is serious about achieving 50-50 representation.

The Zimbabwe constitution adopted in 2013 encourages the upholding of gender equality between men and women.

However, Zimbabwe has largely struggled to fully achieve this feat. For example the country has not had a female in the Presidium since the time that Joice Mujuru was removed.

Parliament of Zimbabwe has never had a female Speaker since independence. In the Cabinet, males are also dominating.

Speaking during debate of the SONA speech, Molokele said ‘’I wanted to talk about gender equality. We as a country, we say that we want to achieve 50% gender equality. Twelve years after the law was passed in 2013, Zimbabwe still does not have what we call a Gender Equality Act.  

‘’The law of the country is very clear that we must achieve 50% gender equality but up to now, twelve years after 2013, we have not had in this Parliament a law from the Government that is called the Gender Equality Act that will help to unpack the gender rights, including the fact that as we speak today, in 2025, if you take from January to today, all the new Government boards and commissions that have been appointed, there has not been any serious attention to any gender equality test.

‘’In each and every new announced board in this country in 2025, check how many women are there. Let us stop saying we are not leaving anyone behind. We are clearly leaving our women behind. We are still making sure that all our commissions and all our boards have more men than women in 2025. This has to come to an end.

‘’One of the things we can do is to enact a law called the Gender Equality Bill that makes it compulsory that any new law, any commission, any board in this country must have 50% gender equality,’’ he said.