Gender bias a real threat to parity for women

A story makes the news and it features a woman caught in a situation.

In fact.

Instead of being hypothetical, Tafadzwa Mushunje, a young girl from Harare was accused of abusing her boyfriend’s child in the most heinous way. Very little benefit of the doubt was thrown her way. In the court of public opinion, some, as a result of conscious bias, and others an unconscious bias, judged and cast her as a villainous home-wrecker (facts were inconvenient and thrown out).

The story turned out to be false but it showed how our society’s default setting is biased against women. And this is widespread.

Now this was a social situation but this easily translates to how women are treated in any setting. People hold onto antiquated opinions whose purposes were to demean women and critically make them subservient. A hugely patriarchal society made sense of the fact that a woman could not vote or that she was not allowed into certain buildings or clubs simply because she was a woman.

The exploits of women are omitted from history in our country with only Mbuya Nehanda being accorded the honour of having a road named after her. Other women have either completely written out as if they never existed or or their role minimalised. We forget that would Edison without Julia, no Simon without Maud, no Joshua without Mama Mafuyana. We ignore the exploits of valiant women who made incredible sacrifices but were not seen as fit to be on par, because they awee not men.

The system created this monster, that means we can justify weird things on the basis of an unconscious bias. It makes sense because it is a default setting and we do not have to challenge it because it comes with its comforts. It is the way we were socialised but we have to get beyond simply accepting victimisation by such construct. We have to actively fight it. Learn your bias and adjust it.

So in the pledge for parity, we commit to challenging gender bias. Doing anything differently flies in the face of the constitution of Zimbabwe and basic human rights.