Fight for gender equality, woman told

The Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development Oppah Muchinguri has called on women to engage various ministries and have their views captured in the realignment of Zimbabwe's 400 laws, to ensure gender equality.

Officially opening a workshop on the validation of sector consultations on engendering the realignment of Constitutional laws in Harare on Monday, Minister Muchinguri said women must be involved in the consultative processes by other ministries if gender inequalities were to be eradicated.

"As women of Zimbabwe, it is important that we take this opportunity to seriously interrogate the laws that are hindering women in all forms of development and those laws that discriminate women one way or the other in content or practice.

"We should consolidate the gains we acquired as women through the new Constitutional gender provisions by engaging various ministries as they review laws and policies in line with the alignment process," she said.

Minister Muchinguri said the Constitution had gender provisions that must not remain on paper, but should translate into tangible benefits for women in communities.

"I am therefore calling on women to take advantage of the realignment process to ensure that the Constitutional guarantees on women's rights are translated into law and subsequently into practice through the enforcement clause."

She called on for an engendered realignment process to ensure that women's rights in politics, economic and social processes would be guaranteed in the new Constitution.

During the workshop attended by more than 500 women representatives from different organisations in Zimbabwe, stakeholders in mining, tourism, agriculture and family law presented their cluster position papers on areas they would want included during the alignment of the 400 laws.

While the majority of the position papers were mainly on economic laws under mining, tourism and agriculture, stakeholders added family laws cluster, arguing that there was need to also prioritise it, to guarantee social protection and development of women and young girls.

All the solicited views on the four areas would be presented to the Government during the engendering and realignment workshop to be held in Harare tomorrow.