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Stephen Mpofu
Perspective

THE heading above is a significant challenge for male chauvinists to change their mindsets for the benefit of both men and women and the development of our beloved motherland.

The voices of women plaiting each other’s hair or doing dishes in urban areas, crushing grain in mortars or grinding it on stones, fetching water from wells, or doing their laundry at rivers can be heard, calling on men — a minority in this country — to “play ball as the time for positive change and equality has come, thanks to our God-sends.”

The God-send in question is the Forum for African Women Educationalists in Zimbabwe (FAWEZ), which is part of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), with membership in 10 countries in Africa. FAWE is a pan-African institution that brings together influential women on the continent in support of the continental development agenda and has partnered with the MasterCard Foundation to bring positive change to the continent.

In our country, women account for 52% of the population of 16 million, yet they play second fiddle to the male minority in all aspects of national development, with vending as their purview. Meanwhile, men dominate politics, governance, and various commercial industries due to their superior educational and professional qualifications.

In homes, women do all the donkeywork: doing dishes, overseeing the upkeep of their residences and families, while husbands are away soaking it in at drinking places or tending crops in rural areas.

Generally, women in Zimbabwe are not given the academic and professional opportunities that men enjoy to play influential roles in the development of our country, despite the critical role played by the girl child alongside the boy child in the armed revolution that freed our motherland from white racist colonial rule.

In these circumstances, women should ideally play a pivotal role in the affairs of our nation, in compliance with the government’s policy “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/ ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi balo/ a nation is built by its owners.” This way, FAWE will be encouraged to help fund the development and empowerment of women for the development of the African continent.

This pen also challenges parents to change their primitive and negative beliefs that educating the girl child to equip her with skills brings no benefit to them, as it enriches her husband’s family.

Yes, yes, it is time that Zimbabwean women run with advanced technologies to move our motherland forward and into brave new futures developmentally and not be made by their minority counterparts, men, to perpetually ride on mundane chores.