WOMEN ACTIVE POLITICAL PARTICPATION IN ZAMBIA; THE VOICES OF VOTERS IN MATERO CONSTITUENCY.

Abstract

Great attention has been given to women's representation in politics since the women's conferences that started in 1975. However, the number of women elected to the zambian parliament has been insignificant. In 1964, women hled 6.7% of parliamentary seats and fifty-three (53) years in 2021, they occupied only 18.8% of the seats. The study aimed at understanding why very few women participate in politics and to propose measures that should be put in place to increase the number of women being elected to the zambian parliament. Quantitative and Qualitative methods of research were used in the study. The primary data was collected through self -administered questionnaire to female parliamentary candidates who lost the elections in 2011 and 2016. Party officials were also interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Further, information was obtained from documents at the national assembly of Zambia, electoral commission of Zambia, GIDD and ZNWL. The samples were drawn using purposive and snowball sampling. Data from the questionnaires was analyzed using the descriptive method of analysis and computed using Microsoft excel. The study is organized in six chapters with each leading progressively to the attainment of the research objectives. The research question was "why few women than men elected to the Zambian parliament? The findings of the study were that few women consider standing for elections because of many factors such as lack of financial resources, family responsibilities, cultural attitudes, lack of support from political parties due to financial predicaments and the fact that many selection committees are dominated by men who pick their fellow men as candidates. The study also found that women faced challenges during campaigning such as corruption, harassment, intimidation, staff competition,m mudslinging, cheating, lack of solidarity among women, insults and attacks, creation of theft, witchcraft, infidelity and being undermined by male opponents. In order to address the under-representation of women in politics, the study recommended the following solutions The Government should start funding political parties equitably. Funding of the political parties by the central government should be enshrined in the republican constitution. This will enable political parties to bring more women on board since they will have resources to assist the candidates. The call for women to start the political career at the low party structures must be adhered to as this will enable them to be part of the adoption process and this will in turn assist women to advocate for their rights . The republican president should show support by nominating women to parliament. This way, he will be sending a good signal to the political parties on the importance of getting more women to parliament. There was need for women to come together and encourage each other and also ministry in charge of gender should be enhanced to embrace women in politics.