Examining the Effectiveness of the Women’s Quota in Zimbabwe: Opportunities and Challenges

This paper makes an evaluation of the implementation of the women’s quota system in Zimbabwe as provided for in the Constitution of Zimbabwe Section124 (1b). This affirmative action measure is temporary and is valid for only two lives of Parliament, which means in 2023 it will not be applicable. In making the evaluation the methodology consisted of document analysis, face to face interviews, tele conferencing, focus group discussions and structured questionnaires with both open ended and close ended questions. Purposive sampling was used and random sampling was also administered. The evaluation also makes use of primary evidence obtained from the Parliament of Zimbabwe. The paper discusses the rationale of having a women’s quota in light of the democratic global wave and calls for gender equality. The paper also gives best practices in terms of implementation of the women’s quota from other countries in the region such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and Rwanda, as well as countries from the international community like Sweden and Finland. The quota system is generally perceived to be a way of redressing the historical gender imbalances existing in the political field. It is an affirmative action method which gives those who have been excluded and discriminated against some avenues to get access to parliamentary representation. This paper argues that the quota system may be a game of numbers for women representation if proper monitoring and evaluation is not done on the achievements, challenges, strengths and weaknesses of the system. The paper therefore seeks to make an evaluation and analysis of strides and gains made from 2013 to date so that strategies are reinforced or changed and mitigation measures can be proposed for improvements in future terms. Through the use of interviews and focus group discussions with some members of the public and some female parliamentarians, the paper discovered that more needs to be done to achieve more gains through the women’s quota in Zimbabwe. Terms of operation should be put in place and more should be done to encourage the women to be fully equipped for the tasks in parliament. Politics is a duty for those who really have the call to perform the duties not for those who are forced or just placed to satisfy the numbers. In Addition, representatives to the quota system should be chosen on merit so that there is effective leadership which can be emulated by future female aspirants into the political arena.