On the 21st of November 2020, Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE) in partnership with Oxfam Zimbabwe trained 20 leaders of women-led Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on how to mainstream Transformative feminist leadership and Unpaid Care and Domestic Work (UCDW) in their programming. These are organisations working on the following thematic areas: eradicating gender based violence, women and child rights, sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR), women’s access to land, climate justice, male engagement for gender equality, women’s economic empowerment etc. WALPE believes that if diverse organisations mainstream transformative feminist leadership and UCDW in their work, it will lead into an increase in the number of women in leadership positions at micro and macro level. This holistic approach to women’s participation in leadership and decision making processes help ensure women are adequately represented at the social, economic, environmental and political level.
Women continue to be under represented in leadership and decision making processes at both community and national level as a result of many factors which include patriarchy, economic inequalities, gender based violence, the burden of unpaid care and domestic work and gender insensitive laws and policies amongst many other challenges. The advent of COVID19 has not spared women and girls from the burden of UCDW thus leaving women with little or no time to pursue other productive work and pursue leadership opportunities.
The women-led CBO and CSO leaders were trained so that they go and train others in their communities to better understand the negative implications of having few women in leadership at community and national level. The training process covered the following thematic areas: Transformative feminist leadership, Political career development, Feminism, Etiquette and confidence building, Campaign strategy, WE-CARE influencing strategies, Climate Change, Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR), Introduction to public service, Social Accountability and Constitutionalism.
At the end of the program, participants vowed to go train many aspiring women leaders in transformative feminist leadership, advocate for the implementation of outstanding electoral reforms that affect women’s ascendancy into leadership, raise awareness on the implications of UCDW on women and raise awareness against all forms of violence against women and girls in their respective communities.
Source: Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE)
