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Ruth Butaumocho-African Agenda

Growing up in the streets of Mufakose, life was a roll-coaster, which required constant intervention from parents and a strong family support system to ensure balance.

With most families still transiting to a newly independent Zimbabwe from a sweltering colonial era, most parents who had failed to proceed with their education owing to lack of funds, or war disruptions, were exerting pressure on their kids to excel academically.

It meant using all forms of threats, even unorthodox means, to elicit good academic results even from the worst or average student.

I recall my mother whispering to me that I had to abandon all my female friends if I had to do well in school because “women were not good for each other”.

She probably meant no harm. 

Her presumptions could have been derived from her socialisation and interaction by other sisters, who disdained sisterhood. 

It was later in life, while trying to duck daggers from all angles, that I realised that I needed the soul-shaking influence of sisterhood and the stability this connection brings.

My resolution to stand with the sisters was firmed in 2016 when I came across a well-known line from the United States former secretary of state Madeleine Albright that she had used over the years which went: “There’s a special place in heaven for women who help one another.”

With Zimbabwe and other countries set to hold general elections in the next two years, gender activists and other progressive individuals have begun to introspect on the leadership matrix, in view of mentoring and nominating more women to stand for public office.

The need to have more women in governance comes amid of a worrisome decline in the number of women standing for public office, at a time Africa has made overall progressive legislation to push for their ascendancy.

The decline has also been felt at country level, where less women made it into political offices in elections that were held in several African countries in the last two years,

Of the 22 African countries that held elections in 2020 — 12 of them presidential — none of them voted female candidates in the presidium. 

A sad decline was also reported in the number of women who were voted as members of Parliament and councillors.

The same trend pervaded 2021 when a mere 17 women were appointed or elected to parliaments, ministerial or electoral offices in the West Africa/Sahel region out of 134 available positions from December 2021 to June 2022.

While the paltry figures have long raised concerns among the region’s women’s-rights advocates, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also chimed in while reporting on the concerning security developments in the region to the Security Council recently.

“I note the continued underrepresentation of women in decision-making instances across the region,” Guterres said on July 7. “I reiterate the importance of promoting the full and meaningful participation and representation of women in all political processes, including in elections and transitions.”

As has become the norm, many reasons are often attributed to the decline, which include the presence of rigid structural systems that keeps women out, violence, lack of resources, patriarchy, lack of electoral laws that deliberately support gender equality and failure by political parties to support women. It is sad and unfortunate that the pendulum has not swung in women’s direction in a long time, a development that calls for a paradigm shift on the voting patterns, and the voter – who has the last say in the voting process.

A disaggregation of the voting patterns and the voter in any part of the world will reveal that women are strategic in determining leadership and governance issues because they are the majority of voters.

But that narrative can change once women decides for the ascendancy of women’s faces to the ballot box. 

The power to determine governance issues lies with women because of their numerical significance globally and their activate participation in politics – but at primary level. According to a graduate student from the University of California, David E Brockman, “The election of female officeholders and the presence of female candidates on ballots itself causes more women to politically participate, both in more routine acts of participation in the mass public and by running for elected office themselves”

One of the main things needed to increase women’s democratic participation is seeing other women in leadership – the role-model effect. Individual women understand their gender identity in countless different ways, but social scientists—and regular people—also think about women as a group, one with distinct policy preferences. 

Because they are affected by the same rigid systems that discriminate them at all levels, women will derive numerous benefits from having more women in power, so that they can collectively initiate policies that address problems they face.

Women are more likely than men to perform caretaking roles — like raising children — and both historically and today they are more likely than men to want stronger healthcare, housing, education, childcare and anti-poverty programmes. 

Such differences, which disenfranchise the two sexes, should then shape the “women’s vote.”

That female vote can only become real, if women choose to support each other, knowing fully well that what comes out of the governance plate will naturally slide into their plates. On the other hand, African leadership also has a responsibility to walk the talk by continuously propping up women in political leadership to ensure diversification in governance and the promotion of pro-poor policies that cater for the majority. Paving the way for more women in the political, business, and civic arena is an investment in more just, equitable, and peaceful societies.

New research in the Harvard Business Review reveals that while both men and women benefit from having a network of well-connected peers across different groups, women who also have an inner circle of close female contacts are more likely to land executive positions with greater authority and higher pay, while there was no link found for the success of men in terms of the gender composition of their inner circles.

Having noted that men are not their close allies when they enter the political ring, female politicians need to form close connections with other women, who can share experiences from fellows who have been there, done that — from how to ask for what you are worth to bringing your unique talents to leadership.

Aspiring female politicians will also need to find their squads within their political parties, tap into them and also amplify other women who have hold the same aspirations.

Africa’s Agenda 2063 commits to improving women’s political participation through several tenets that include Africa’s good governance, democracy, and respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law.

These aspirations embed a culture of gender equality and good governance.

 Such aspiration and accompanying framework makes clear the fact that the continent needs an equal balance in power and that will be achieved once women push for the ascendancy of their sisters to ensure an equilibrium.

With only a few months to go before Zimbabwe holds Presidential and general elections, both aspiring female politicians and voters should begin to think and work around the adage which states that “there is nothing more powerful than an outstretched hand of another woman in your direction”.

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