Women in Zimbabwe can drive change in their communities if they are given the skills, resources and space to lead, a charity director has said. Ednah Bhala, who runs the Maranatha Orphans Care Trust, called for greater investment in women’s empowerment, governance participation and access to economic opportunities. She was speaking on Wednesday at an outreach meeting in Bulawayo hosted by the Southern Western Region Gender Network (SWRGN), with which her organisation is partnering.
The network is running a three-year project, funded by the European Union, that aims to strengthen civil society and community groups working on justice, governance and citizens’ rights in marginalised areas. Bhala said women had already shown they could influence governance when properly equipped. “We believe women can have the agency and the voice if they are given the necessary skills, information and space,” she said.
“We have seen women in our communities participating at council level during budgeting, raising issues that affect women so that councils can adopt gender-sensitive budgets.” She cited cases in which women had challenged the misuse of school funds and intervened to stop child marriages. In Ward 14 in Matobo district, she said, gender champions working with the Ministry of Women Affairs had halted a child marriage that had already been arranged. In another community, women had confronted a head teacher accused of misusing school funds.
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But Bhala warned that shifting long-held attitudes towards women would take sustained work at family, community and institutional levels. “Issues start from the family, how does the family appreciate that a woman can also have a voice?” she said. She also urged closer cooperation between government and civil society, saying the two were too often viewed as adversaries.
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