ELLEN MLAMBO
MIRROR REPORTER

MASVINGO – Gender parity in public offices continue to be heavily skewed against women with only 13% of the positions of CEOs in Government entities occupied by the fairer sex.
This was said by the Permanent Secretary in the office of the President and Cabinet; Corporate Governance Unit, Allen Choruma.
This, he said ran against the provisions of the Constitution which calls for gender equity.
He was speaking at a Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) workshop on public procurement and corporate governance held at a local lodge last week.
He also bemoaned the large number of acting CEOs in public entities, a situation he said contributes to the many governance challenges.
A survey carried out in 2021 shows that of the 104 entities looked into, 32 of them were headed by acting CEOs.
The objective of the workshop was to entrench a culture of good governance in procurement and was attended by CEOs across public service.
The workshop was held under the theme, Collaborative Governance: Building Partnerships for Effective Public Procurement and Corporate Governance.
The survey also revealed that 73% of the board chairpersons were men and the remainder women. Some of those chairpersons are on an acting basis.
On board members 63% of the total were men while the remainder were women.
However, women dominated the corporate secretary post with 60 % while males constituted 40%.
“We did a survey recently on gender representation. When it comes to corporate secretaries, there are more females than males, with 60% female and 40% male. What is worrying us is on the CEO positions, out of 104 entities surveyed, only 13% were females with males constituting 87% and hence there is a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that there is gender balance.
“However, my prediction is that if a survey is to be conducted this year, the 37% board representation for females will rise to around 43% with gender parity being achieved by 2026,
Gender balance on boards increased from 33% in 2020 to 37% in 2021 and 40 % in 2022. “The Constitution mandates that there be gender balance in all aspects and spheres of government, government departments and agencies of government (public entities) the bulk of which are state owned enterprises and parastatals. In compliance with the constitutional provisions, Government has put in place policies that are geared towards gender balance specifically in the sector that I represent, of public entities.
“The Public Entities Corporate Governance Act is aligned to chapter 9 of the constitution and under section 11, the act speaks to gender balance on public entity boards, senior management and the whole entity,” he said.
He noted other challenges in the public entities which include failure by line ministries to extend or renew the term of office of board members within the stipulated time limits and entities not fully embracing Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in their operations as most functions remained manual.