Last year, as we marked International Women’s Day, I wrote about accelerating action for gender equality. The call then was urgency.
It was a reminder that progress delayed is progress denied.
A year later, the question is less about acceleration and more about accountability. Have we moved from rhetoric to reality yet?
This year’s Women’s Day global theme is “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” To me, the theme feels less like a slogan and more like a test. To an extent it forces us to confront a difficult truth: Zimbabwe does not suffer from a shortage of commitments to women. Rather, we suffer from a shortage of implementation.
We have the language. We have the policies. We have the constitutional guarantees. But do we have the lived experience of equality?
Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution is clear. It prohibits gender-based discrimination. It affirms equality. It protects dignity.
Over the years, legislative reforms around marriage, inheritance and representation have signalled progress. The quota system has increased women’s presence in Parliament. On paper, this is advancement.
But rights on paper do not automatically translate into rights in practice, right? Representation has improved numerically, yet influence remains uneven.
Women in decision-making spaces often operate within structures that were not designed for them. Political participation does not always mean political power.
Beyond Parliament, the everyday Zimbabwean woman continues to negotiate inequality in more subtle but equally significant ways. The informal sector — which carries a substantial portion of our economy — is heavily feminised, yet largely unprotected.
Women trade, farm, sew, cook, cross borders, and carry families through economic instability. Their labour sustains households and communities, but remains undervalued and under-secured.
Adolescent pregnancy rates, though declining in some areas, remain a concern.
Early marriage persists in certain provinces. Access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services remains uneven, especially in rural areas.
These are not abstract statistics; they are daily interruptions to girls’ futures.
So yes, rights exist. But their reach is inconsistent. A right that cannot be accessed, enforced, or afforded begins to feel like a promise deferred.
One of the clearest illustrations of how women’s rights are often moralised rather than operationalised is the recent debate (or lack thereof) around Clause 11 of the Medical Services Amendment Bill.
Clause 11 sought to address procedural and administrative barriers within Zimbabwe’s already restrictive termination of pregnancy framework.
It was not a radical overhaul of the law. It was not an expansionist manifesto.
It was an attempt to clarify how existing legal grounds could be practically implemented. Yet the clause was ultimately removed from the Bill after intense public pushback.
That conversation deserves its own detailed article. But it also belongs here.
Because when we speak about rights, particularly reproductive rights, the debate in Zimbabwe often shifts from law and justice to sentiment and morality.
It becomes about emotion rather than access. It becomes about values rather than constitutional guarantees.
But rights are not granted based on comfort. They are not subject to popular opinion. They are not suspended because a conversation is uncomfortable.
Whether one personally agrees or disagrees with termination of pregnancy is not the legal question.
The legal question is whether women — including minors who fall within the current lawful grounds — can access services safely, without unnecessary administrative barriers, stigma, or delay.
Justice, in this context, means clarity. It means systems that function. It means that where the law permits something, the pathway to access is not obstructed by bureaucracy or moral panic.
When women’s rights are consistently reframed as moral debates, implementation stalls. And when implementation stalls, the consequences are not theoretical. They are lived – by women and girls.
If this year’s theme is truly about “Rights. Justice. Action,” then reproductive health cannot be selectively excluded from that framework simply because it is culturally and religiously sensitive.
Rights should not be moralised. They should be upheld.
If rights are the foundation, justice is the measure of whether those rights mean anything. Zimbabwe has laws addressing gender-based violence.
We have legal frameworks meant to protect survivors. We have institutions tasked with enforcement. Yet for many women, justice is still distant — geographically, financially, emotionally.
Justice is not simply the existence of a law. It is the lived confidence that the law will work for you. For a woman in a rural district, reporting abuse may mean walking long distances or facing stigma.
For a young woman navigating workplace harassment, speaking out may carry economic risk. For survivors, the burden of proof can feel heavier than the burden of harm.
Justice delayed is justice denied. But justice inaccessible is justice imagined.
And while Zimbabwe is not unique in this struggle — countries across Sub-Saharan Africa continue to wrestle with enforcement gaps — comparison should not comfort us.
South Africa’s intense public reckoning with gender-based violence, Kenya’s youth-led feminist movements, and regional commitments under the Maputo Protocol show that activism can shift national conversations.
The lesson is not that others have solved the problem, but that sustained pressure can elevate women’s rights from policy discussions to national priorities.
Justice requires systems that function. It requires budgets that reflect commitments. It requires institutions that are responsive, not symbolic. And it requires political will. If we are honest, much of the meaningful action has not been driven from podiums, but from below.
Across Zimbabwe, women continue to build change in quiet, determined ways.
Community groups supporting survivors. Young women launching businesses despite limited access to capital.
Civil society organisations pushing for law reform, data transparency, and service delivery improvements.
Churches, market associations, youth networks — spaces where women lead not because a quota demands it, but because necessity does.
In times of economic strain, it is often women who absorb the shock.
They stretch incomes, reorganise households, take on additional labour.
But increasingly, they are also organising — demanding land rights, fair wages, safer public transport, digital inclusion.
There is movement. There is innovation. There is courage. Yet action from below cannot permanently compensate for inertia from above. The question for 2026 is not whether Zimbabwean women are acting. They are. The question is whether our systems are acting with them.
It would be incomplete to discuss rights and justice without acknowledging the broader economic context. Inflation, unemployment, and instability do not affect all citizens equally. They deepen existing inequalities.
Women disproportionately shoulder unpaid care work. They dominate lower-paying sectors.
They are more likely to operate small informal enterprises vulnerable to policy shifts and currency volatility.
Economic vulnerability often limits their ability to leave abusive situations, pursue education, or access legal recourse.
Gender equality cannot be divorced from economic justice. If a woman’s economic survival depends on endurance, then her rights become conditional. And conditional rights are fragile rights.
International Women’s Day and Month has become a fixture on calendars.
There will be panels, speeches, social media graphics, and carefully worded commitments. There will be celebration — and celebration matters. Progress, where it exists, deserves recognition.
But celebration without reflection becomes performance.
Last year, we spoke about acceleration. This year, let’s talk about accountability.
Are budgets aligned with gender commitments?
Are enforcement mechanisms adequately resourced?
Are rural women experiencing the same protections as urban women?
Are girls finishing school at higher rates?
Are women in leadership influencing policy, not merely occupying seats?
Are politically sensitive rights implemented with the same seriousness as popular ones? These are not rhetorical questions. They are measurable indicators.
Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.
The emphasis must remain on “all.” Not just women in cities. Not just women with access. Not just women whose stories are visible. Equality cannot be selective. A year after calling for acceleration, we are at a point of reckoning. Zimbabwe has frameworks. It has reform language. It has regional commitments. What it needs now is consistent implementation, sustained political will, and investment that matches rhetoric.
International Women’s Day cannot become an annual performance. It must remain an annual audit.
And if we are serious about moving from rhetoric to reality, then the work begins the day after March 8 — in budget rooms, in courtrooms, in Parliamentary debates, in classrooms, in communities.
Not just in speeches.
Not just in celebration.
But in action that is measurable, inclusive, and sustained.
That is the standard this year demands.
*Madamombe is a gender and communications expert.
These weekly articles are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, managing consultant of Zawale Consultants (Private) Limited, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance & Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe. Email- kadenge.zes@gmail.com or Mobile No. +263 772 382 852