Matutu, TawandaTawandaMatutu2025-02-132025-02-132025978-3-98989-042-8https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/106051While Zimbabwe is one of the countries that are striving towards gender mainstreaming, leadership of political parties is still engulfed in the tentacles of masculinism. This scenario, which is arguably an inheritance from the African traditional leadership styles, has been Africa’s greatest undoing in the continent’s attempts to attain gender parity. The cases of Joyce Mujuru, Grace Mugabe and Thokozani Khupe are a clear testimony. Mujuru’s unceremonious ejection from the Zanu-PF presidium in 2014 after being accused of harbouring presidential ambitions, Grace Mugabe’s disgraceful expulsion from the same party for accusations of state-capture, Thokozani Khupe’s neutralization by Morgan Tsvangirayi through the appointment of two male vice presidents and her controversial loss of party presidency to Nelson Chamisa and later to Douglas Mwonzora are glaring examples of how gendered the Zimbabwean political space has been. The CCC has also operated with a male president, two male vice presidents and a peripheral female vice president. All these developments have led to the absence of a woman in the presidium of some of these political formations and where a woman is part of the presidium, her wings will be so clipped that she remains more of a ceremonial official. This chapter argues that the leadership trajectory of Zimbabwean political parties has taken a very pronounced patriarchal slant. It is an unwritten norm that when it comes to leadership of political parties, women should play second fiddle. This has reinforced the old patriarchal stereotype that women should be seen and not heard. Indeed, these three, once political heavyweights, are now only being seen, very little or nothing is being heard from them.engmasculinizationcontestationsgenderedpresidiumpatriarchal320bookpart