‘Women must lead in COVID-19 decision-making’

CIVIL society organisations (CSOs) yesterday raised concern over the limited number of women in COVID-19 response leadership structures despite that they are the most affected by the pandemic. In a statement yesterday, the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) said women were the first respondents in COVID-19 care as they were health providers, primary caregivers and also dealt with the grassroots, and yet they were not adequately represented at policy development and decision-making levels.

“We continue to note a big structural gender imbalance problem with the COVID-19 taskforce structures at district, provincial and national levels. Statistics indicate that very few women have been included in the COVID-19 response leadership structures,” read the statement.

“The effects of poor women’s representation in the COVID-19 structures have manifested in government’s failure to adequately respond to the specific needs of women and girls during COVID-19.”

The coalition said there was need for the implementation of constitutional provisions which spoke to gender balance and equality in representation in all spheres of society.

“This includes COVID-19 taskforce and response groups at all levels and the urgent publication of analysed sex and age disaggregated data by government on the composition of the COVID-19 taskforce teams across the country.”

Shamwari Yemwanasikana director Ekenia Chifamba said the need for women in leadership structures for COVID-19 had never been more pronounced than now because there is an escalation of pre-existing women issues.

“Of late what we have seen is that most responses that have come through are gender blind to the needs of women, thereby one of the pathways that can be undertaken in order to tackle this imbalance is involving women in leadership structures and COVID-19 responses,” she said.

Chifamba said COVID-19 posed unique challenges to women and history and pre-existing statistics had shown that women were more vulnerable during natural disasters.

“We are talking about issues of general access to resources and sustenance at household level because most women are into small and medium enterprises that have been greatly affected by COVID-19. If we have more women in leadership structures like budgeting and finance, the allocation of resources will be gender sensitive and address these issues,” she said.