women do not participate in politics is the perception that participating in politics is dangerous. Although women believe that they should participate in politics, many are fearful of doing so, and with good justification”.29 Within the MDC Alliance opposition party, some female candidates claimed that dominant men in the party demanded sexual favours in return to nomination for candidature, and some of those who refused reportedly found their names left out of the party running list. In the ZANU-PF primary elections, several women that were sitting MPs lost the elections. An investigation by NewsDay in conjunction with the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) revealed that men used other tactics like mudslinging, sexism, and turning females against each other to ensure women were out of the race.27 Young women found it difficult to penetrate traditional party politics to make it on the candidates’ lists. But there were exceptions. Joana Mamombe, the MDC Alliance’s 25-year-old candidate was voted in as MP for Harare West Constituency. Mamombe is currently the youngest MP in the country. Several young women chose to contest as independent candidates. For instance, 33year-old Fadzayi Mahere ran as an independent MP candidate in Mt Pleasant Constituency in Harare. Linda Masarira initially ran as an independent candidate for the Harare Central Constituency, before running on an MDC-T ticket. Linda Sibanyoni ran for the Harare East Constituency, while Vimbai Musvaburi ran for the Bulawayo South Constituency. In Harare Jessie Fungai Majome ran as an independent for the Harare West Constituency. Several others ran as independent candidates for council elections. For the Parliamentary elections, none of the female independent candidates won. Representation in Government Women remained largely under-represented in local and national political offices, and men overwhelmingly held most senior positions in the public sector. In government, out of 21 cabinet seats created after the elections, only 4 women were allocated cabinet seats. These were Oppah Muchinguri for the Ministry of Defence and War Veterans; Kirsty Coventry for the Ministry of Youth, Sport, Arts, and Recreation; Sekesai Nzenza for Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and Monica Mutsvangwa for the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. While this was an increase from 2013, this was well below their 52% share of the population and well below the equal representation required by the Constitution. Women held 6 out of 12 minister of state positions and 6 of 13 deputy minister positions. Women made up 31% of the National Assembly and Senate, down from 35% in 2013. However, only 12.4% women were elected outside the women's quota for National Assembly. On 12 September, the Senate elected a woman as president in the form of Mabel Chinomona. In total, this filled all the 60 seats reserved for women in the National Assembly in terms of the constitutional quota system. At the local government level, women held approximately 19% of councillor positions nationwide. The Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) carried out a pre-election assessment from 2-6 July followed by monitoring of the elections from 27 July to 2 August in all the country’s ten provinces. Among the key observations, the ZGC noted that the lack of legislation to compel political parties to comply with constitutional provisions and to ensure implementation of the parity principle in Ironically, women make up most voters at both national and provincial level. However, they had little representation in the political fields as shown by the numbers of the outgoing Members of Parliament (34%) and councillors (16%), and further evidenced by the paltry number of 28 female candidates who contested in 2018. Voter registration among young women between the ages of 18-25 was especially low. According to the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU), “Predominate amongst the reasons why 27. “Mudslinging, sexism scath female politicians” Newsday, 20 June 2018. 28. “A Gender Audit of the 2018 Elections” Report produced by the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) for the Institute for Young Women’s Development (IYWD) & Hivos, September 2018, page 2. 29. “A Gender Audit of the 2018 Elections” Report produced by the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) for the Institute for Young Women’s Development (IYWD) & Hivos, September 2018, page 2. 39 STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT ZIMBABWE 2018