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Daisy Jeremani Gender Editor
Women make 52 percent of the population, but had been largely marginalised even by successive colonial governments in the areas of human rights, economic empowerment, health, education and decision-making processes. Since independence Zimbabwe has made significant strides in ensuring gender parity and equality in economics, politics, at the workplace and other areas.

This was as a result of many pieces of legisaltion aimed at emancipating women so that they could take their rightful place as equals in society.

The new Constitution adopted in 2013 further enhanced the position of women as it contains provisions for the promotion and attainment of gender equality and women empowerment.

These provisions include a non-discrimination and gender equality and parity clauses on equal representation of women and men in public office and positions of decision-making.

The new constitution brought into effect several positive gender equality provisions. Key among these is Section 124 (1) (b) which provides for the creation of special seats for women for a period of 10 years under a party list system of proportional representation. These seats are created in addition to the already existing constituency based seats. So in the last election though numbers of women elected dropped, the legislated quota in the form of proportional representation for women ensured more women representatives in Parliament.

The country has seen a rise in the number of women in powerful positions and these include former Vice-President Joice Mujuru who was appointed Vice-President in 2005, Thokozani Khupe who was deputy Prime Minister during the inclusive government, Senate president Edna Madzongwe and Justice Rita Makarau, former Judge President.

To demonstrate its commitment to the advancement of women, the government has also ratified a number of regional and international treaties, conventions, declarations and protocols on gender and women empowerment.

Among these is elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the 1997 Sadc Declaration on Gender and Development with its addendum on the Prevention and Eradication of Violence against Women and Children.

The government has also followed this up by domesticating these conventions and protocols through enacting several pieces of domestic legislation designed to promote gender equality and women empowerment. Among these are the Sexual Discrimination Removal Act 2001, the National Gender Policy 2004, the Domestic Violence Act and Inheritance Laws. Through these, women have been able to find redress to a plethora of social injustices. Though domestic violence continues to inflict immeasurable social costs, the government through the Ministry of Women Affairs Gender and Community Development is doing all within its powers to reduce cases of domestic violence.

Today women who yesterday only had access to land now own it as the government realised that to eliminate gender gap in agriculture it is important to empower women and in the process improve food security not only for women but the nation as a whole.

Due to the patriarchal views women were not entitled to land ownership, but only had access through a male relation, like husband uncle or brother. That changed when the government embarked on the land reform programme which was accelerated in 2000. According to Women and Land in Zimbabwe National coordinator, Thandiwe Chidavarume, women now own 20 percent of redistributed land.

She said 18 percent of women were allocated land under the A1 scheme while 12 percent were allocated under A2.

All because of Uhuru women can now inherit wealth, own and register property in their names and can also become chiefs like Chief Ndube of Filabusi.

When the land redistribution exercise began women approached government demanding that 20 percent of the acquired land be set aside for women. “In hindsight we wish we could have gone for a 50-50 call, but coming from a patriarchal society we limited ourselves and asked for 20. We are now pushing to get more,” said Chidavarume.

The advent of independence saw a rise in the number of schools that the government built and also the rise in a number of girls that enrolled for both primary and secondary education. Through government efforts and advocacy, more families are sending girls to school.