As the municipal Councils prepare for Mayoral elections countrywide, we would like to urge the Councilors countrywide to cease the opportunity to deepen the virtues of gender equality and equity by voting for more women to take up decision-making positions, as Mayors and deputy mayors.
It is high time that Zambia began to domesticate the provisions of the SADC Gender protocol on 50 – 50 women representation in decision-making. It is sad that 50 years after independence, the participation of women in decision-making has remained very low at all levels.
It is totally unacceptable that the numbers of women Parliamentarians has remained very low, just like that of female councilors. Surely, there must be something wrong that less than 90 women are councilors out of an establishment of more than 1, 300 countrywide.
Attention has been drawn to the persisting inequality between men and women in decision-making in our country. The Beijing Platform for Action reaffirmed that women’s persistent exclusion from formal politics, in particular, raises a number of specific questions regarding the achievement of effective democratic transformations, in practice. It undermines the concept of democracy, which, by its nature, assumes that the right to vote and to be elected should be equally applied to all citizens, both women and men. The absence of women from political decision-making has an obvious negative impact on the entire process of democratization.
Women’s equal participation in decision-making is not only a demand for justice or democracy, but can also be seen as a necessary condition for women’s interests to be taken into account. Without the participation of women at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development, and peace cannot be achieved.
There is need therefore for both women and men to participate in the governance processes of the country. We therefore urge the Councilors to vote for female candidates during the forthcoming Mayoral elections. In Councils already run by women we urge them to maintain the status core.
BEATRICE GRILLO
NGOCC CHAIRPERSON
You are busy hiding in the name of NGO where you know for sure its a source of cheap and quick money.Why cant you come out yourself and stand as an MP.its expensive and all your donor driven money will dry out.Its not like women dont want to do this.How much money did you sponsor towards the female councillors,MPS or even towards nawaki who stood on much bigger position
Oops! whew! 50-50 with men, mama you need to humble yourself, it is God who said that women shall be ruled by men, this is not human right. and am not saying they cannot contribute.
I accept that women can play a vital role in shaping decisions in a nation if EMPOWERED to do so. However, our nation does not empower women and we have very few empowered women (usually un married). Instead we use women for the benefit of Man. Look at Sata and how he is abusing women in the name of gender equality and empowerement? Most, if not all investigative wings – The Police, Judiciary, ACC and DEC are headed by women. Not because this empoweres them but because Sata knows he can “easily control them” and that is evident in the way these insititutions have reduced themselves to PF puppets and act on instructions from state house. As a society, Zambian culture is shaped in this way and anything else will be deeply frawned upon…