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Parliamentary
performance and gender
Rumbidzai
Dube, Senior Researcher, Research & Advocacy Unit (RAU)
November
13, 2013
This is Part
2 of 3 of RAU's analysis of the 7th Parliament of Zimbabwe
Read Part
1 - Attendance in Zimbabwe's 7th Parliament June 2012 - June 2013
Read Part
3 - What happened in Parliament? An analysis of the participation
of MPs 2012 to 2013
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document
- Acrobat
PDF version (512KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader
on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking
here
Executive
Summary
A gendered analysis
of the last year of the Seventh Parliament of Zimbabwe indicates
that the general facilitatory and inhibitory dynamics affecting
ordinary women’s participation in politics and decision-making
are the same dynamics that affect women in Parliament. Women who
take an active role in governance and political life are confronted
by inhibiting factors including patriarchy and the violent nature
of the political terrain. Women who manage to attain political office
would have clearly overcome enormous hurdles relative to their male
counterparts. In Parliament, women still have to deal with the pervasive
patriarchal attitudes that at times prevent them from fully participating.
Even the President has proven himself not to be immune to the prejudices
of his gender with recent remarks that the limited number of women
appointees in ministerial posts was due to the lack of educated
and qualified women. With this broad context in mind, this report
examines the performance of female parliamentarians versus their
male counterparts, and is complementary to and draws from RAU’s
earlier report on parliamentary attendance. Some key findings
highlighted in this report:
- Women were
a significant minority in the Seventh Parliament 34/210 in the
House of Assembly and 23/93 in the Senate;
- As a group,
female MPs attendance was more impressive than that of their male
counterparts. All of them, except one, scored attendance rates
above 25%. The exception was the Vice President with a 23% attendance
rate. Given her enormous responsibilities outside Parliament,
she still did better than most non-executive male MPs;
- In the House
of Assembly, Honourable Margaret Matienga of the MDC -T party
held the highest record of attendance, 47 out of 48 (98%);
- The female
MP who had the least attendance rate in the house that she represented;
Senate was Senator Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga of the MDC
party who recorded a 100% absentee record in the whole year;
- On average,
women spoke 9.7 times in Senate and 6.5 times in the House of
Assembly the whole year (June 2012-June 2013);
- Most female
MPs seemed generally afraid to voice their opinions and speak
boldly on technical matters as much as the men did in Parliament.
This included even some female parliamentarians who hold very
senior positions in their parties and have considerable political
clout;
- An important
milestone achievement for women in the Seventh Parliament was
the inclusion of provisions seeking to achieve gender equality
within all spheres of life in the new Constitution
Download this
document
- Acrobat
PDF version (512KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader
on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking
here
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