The women led by Emilia Muchawa, deputy chairperson of the Thematic Committee on Gender Equality, broke into song, denouncing the composition of different committees overseeing the constitution making process, which are dominantly composed of male candidates.
The Minister of Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development Olivia Muchena, however, intervened and presented a set of grievances to the co-chairs of the Constitution Select Committee.
She raised objections over the representation of women in the constitution making process.
Minister Muchena said unless the issue of gender parity was addressed, women were not going to participate in the constitution making process.
"We call upon the co-chairpersons to redress the situation before the beginning of the outreach programme by co-opting women into different committees to address gender parity
"Zimbabwe has already ratified the Sadc Protocol on Gender and Development and this should be respected," said Dr Muchena.
She said the constitution making process was in total disregard of the spirit of the Global Political Agreement on the issue of enhancing the status of women.
Dr Muchena said women were objecting to the composition of the management committee, which was made up of chief negotiators of political parties in the GPA and the co-chairs of the Constitution Select Committee.
Dr Muchena said there were also gender imbalances in the Select Committee, thematic committees and the whole outreach teams.
After presenting their case, there were a lot of objections from men who were arguing that the complaints were contrary to the business of the day.
The women refused to be silenced and responded by singing and denouncing their male counterparts, prompting the hotel staff to switch off the lights in the conference centre.
Commenting on the matter, the Co-Chairperson of the Constitution Select Committee, Mr Douglas Mwonzora said they had noted the petition brought by women on the issue of female representation.
"We are going to attend to that issue because it's a genuine issue which all stakeholders should address. We are going to engage political parties and the Management Committee over that matter.
"This is because the issue of women has potential budgetary implications on our side if we ignore them," he said.
Mr Mwonzora said the Select Committee was going to act decisively on the members who were fraudulently accredited to participate in the programme.
"We are going to carry out a massive audit on the number of people who were accredited to participate in this programme because there are some people who fraudulently acquired accreditation," he said.
This comes after the realisation that the number of delegates who were supposed to participate in the outreach programme had ballooned from 628 to 714.
Most of the people who were accredited through unscrupulous means were freelance journalists who purport to represent private media organisations. Mr Mwonzora said dates for the outreach programme would be announced next week.
"We are working on the dates and then put people into groups taking into consideration political affiliation where applicable, gender and language," he said.
Mr Mwonzora added that the management committee that included negotiators from the three parties in the inclusive Government would meet today to receive a report on the training programme.
He said that 210 rappotteurs that would assist the thematic teams would be trained on Monday, bringing the number of outreach teams to 924.
The three-day training programme was attended by members from various political parties and members of civil society to prepare for the outreach programme that would gather the people's views on the new constitution.