There is a heavy, unspoken weight that accompanies a young woman navigating the realities of our economy today, a quiet struggle that most of society completely misreads or ignores.
Walk through the bustling streets of Harare or speak to young women huddled outside market stalls and you quickly realise that the official narratives about empowerment are often a far cry from the realities of daily survival. Society looks at young women and sees resilience; what it fails to see is exhaustion.
"People think we are just hustling because we are ambitious, but they don’t understand the desperation behind it," says 26-year-old Rudo, an informal trader in the capital. "When you wake up every day wondering how to pay for transport, how to feed your siblings and how to avoid being taken advantage of by people who hold a little bit of power over you, you aren't living. You are just dodging traps. Society looks at us and says, 'Look how strong these girls are!' But nobody asks what happens to our minds when we are carrying this weight with zero safety nets."
Rudo’s sentiments capture a profound disconnect between public discourse and lived reality. While economic reports discuss growth and entrepreneurship metrics, they rarely capture the psychological toll of systemic vulnerability. The severity of the situation lies precisely in this invisibility. Financial instability breeds dependency and dependency strips away a young woman’s choices, often trapping her in toxic professional or domestic environments simply because walking away means starvation.
Another young woman, Diana, shares similar frustration regarding how society trivialises their daily battles. "They talk about gender equality in workshops and boardrooms, but down on the ground, the expectations are suffocating," she notes. "If you are unemployed, you are looked down upon. If you try to start a small business, you face capital barriers, harassment and a system that treats you like a nuisance. Nobody realises how close to the edge so many of us are. One medical emergency or one collapsed market stall away from absolute ruin."
Research consistently underscores these testimonies. Data from local gender development and human rights organisations highlight that young women face disproportionate barriers to formal financial inclusion, asset ownership, and secure employment. Yet, statistics alone cannot convey the trauma of living in perpetual precarity.
When economic exclusion is paired with the traditional burdens of unpaid care work and societal judgement, the result is an escalating mental health crisis that remains largely unaddressed.
We can no longer afford to treat young women's struggles as mere background noise or accept resilience as a permanent substitute for justice.
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Addressing this crisis demands immediate, coordinated action. Civil society organisations and community leaders must strengthen holistic support structures, moving beyond isolated financial programmes to integrate mental health resources, legal aid and safe referral pathways. Furthermore, local authorities and policymakers must intentionally dismantle the bureaucratic and financial red tape that locks young female entrepreneurs out of formal economic participation.
It is time for society to stop romanticising the endurance of young women and start fixing the systems that force them to endure so much in silence.
