Gender inequality is not an isolated Matabeleland issue but a worldwide phenomenon that continues to stand between women’s dreams and achievement. Matabeleland must stand with all progressive global forces to ensure the removal of all barriers to women’s participation in leadership and public life.

Masculinisation of participation in politics and public life denies more than half of Matabeleland society the opportunity to engage in decision-making processes, and with that presents unsurmountable barriers to human development.

Like the rest of the progressive world, Matabeleland must commit to the eradication of the present-day unequal societal order that sees girls valued less than boys, women less than men, and exposed to multiple risks throughout their lives; women face risks of all kinds in all interactive spaces in our society where they participate in vital everyday socioeconomic and political activities.

Full and unrestricted women participation in leadership and public life in Matabeleland is a pre-requisite to development. It is unacceptable that girls and women’s safety remains threatened at home, at work, at school, from their families and from strangers. The impact of gender inequality reaches far and wide, but we will focus on its impact in women’s participation in politics.

Addressing questions on why we have disproportionately less women in positions of influence in our society requires sincerity from men. And the patriarchal nature of our society is the foundation of the challenges faced by women today. We may try to find blame on women for their circumstances, but there is no evidence to suggest the lower participation of women in leadership and public life is a result of a lack of qualifications, lack of skills and/ or experience and not because of the patriarchal social architecture.

We are under no illusion that the current social framework in Matabeleland is flawed and stacked against girls and women, and we acknowledge with concern that this social framework perpetuates and maintains gender inequality and its related damaging exclusion of women from decision-making processes leading to feminisation of poverty.

Calls for societal design changes are long overdue; men must rise to the level of women, listen to understand women, not just listen to respond to their own biases; men must work with women to interpret and frame their challenges from their perspective so that society is shaped to be responsive to real women’s needs and legislation is not a figment of men’s imagined world.

Related to the above, it must be recognised across Matabeleland society that equality of conditions is a requirement to attain a fairer society, and women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of co-shaping our social, economic, and political spaces.

Denying the existence of a problem or blame shifting or even minimising it will never address it or cause it to disappear or stop it from causing harm to others. Instead of adopting a misogynist stance and accusing women of being prone to making complaints and being weak for raising their concerns against male conduct in shared political spaces, men must work with women to understand the nature and extent of the abusive culture, and to ensure accountability within the system.

We cannot continue to ignore the inherent violations of women’s right to participate in Matabeleland social spaces without fear of perceived and real abuse by men; women have persistently complained about the operationally threatening, insecure and unsafe political environment for women, and it being the reason for many of them not pursuing careers in politics, but those complaints continue to lie in some male occupied offices where they are gathering dust.

Here we are talking of serious allegations of sexual harassment including men in positions of power asking women for sexual ‘favours’ in return for campaign funding or to expediate their political progression have been raised, but we are unsure how many cases have been formally reported to political party leadership or their legal departments or to state law enforcement agents for investigation.

There may be very few reported cases of sexual harassment at present, but it would not be a surprise that these cases are widely under reported in politics and public life for fear of reprisals. And those few cases reported are rarely investigated for the same fear of reprisals from male perpetrators in power.

Exclusion of women from all political and public life leaves society dangerously imbalanced; for years, our society has bent over backwards to meet men’s interests to an extent that we are now upside down facing a world notoriously unsafe for women. We need to revise this political, social, and cultural construct that has normalised the repression of girls and women; co-creating safe spaces for all must be Matabeleland’s political priority to encourage active participation of women in leadership and public life. Aggressive measures are required to redress the anomalies; we will need affirmative action to proactively create leadership pathways for women to achieve positions of political power, and we will need to reserve positions for women.