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Minister Ignatius Chombo said wo-men in decision-making positions in the governance sector should use their influence to ensure gender sensitive policies were “fully and effectively implemented”.
The minister made the remarks at the close of a workshop on mainstreaming gender issues in local authorities held in Harare last week.
Zimbabwe Local Government Association representative, Mrs Lucy Furamera, had raised concern that Minister Chombo had failed to appoint women to positions of special interest councillors.
Zimbabwe has 2 500 councillors, but only 385 are women.
Sixty are in urban areas while the rest represent rural wards.
The whole country does not have a woman as mayor with only Plumtree boasting of having an urban council chairperson.
Out of the 91 local authorities, there is also not a single woman town clerk with the exception of Ruwa Town Council, which has a female town secretary.
Mrs Furamera said only three rural district councils had women at the helm. Runde, Tongogara and Umguza have women as council chairpersons while Manyame and Makonde have women as chief executive officers.
Mrs Furamera said women were saddened when Minister Chombo failed to appoint them as special interest councillors.
“We were all shocked that in male dominated councils, Cde Minister you went on to appoint more men at the expense of women.
“If I may take Harare as an example, in a council of 46 wards, with 41 male and five female councillors, you went on to appoint 11 male special interest councillors,” she said.
In response, the minister said some of the women approached turned down the appointments while some with capacity choose to remain invisible.
He, however, challenged people like Mrs Furamera who work with women to recommend some for appointments.
He praised the Women’s Trust for championing the training programme saying exposure would help women to realise the importance and value of taking leadership positions in governance.
Government, he said, was fully supportive of women empowerment programmes and that his ministry had recommended a significant number of women for leadership positions.