Women and Land in Zimbabwe (WLZ)

About the Organization Contact and Service Areas Successes and Impact Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security Survivor Leadership Understanding Economic Harm in Context

About the Organization

Country

Zimbabwe

Number of survivors served in a year

500+

Languages

English

Groups most commonly served

Ethnic, religious, or other minorities Indigenous peoples, communities, or nations Members of the LGBTQIA+ community Rural communities Women Youth, children, or adolescents

Type of organization

Nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO)

Program model(s)

Holistic crisis response Rights-based economic justice Systemic change through strategic partnerships Transforming social norms through community-building

Contact and Service Areas

Email

ncoordinator@wlz.co.zw, monitoring@wlz.co.zw

Address

Number 22 Suffolk Road, Strathaven, Harare, Zimbabwe

Service Area(s)

Zimbabwe (25 districts nationally)

Successes and Impact

“We have seen a paradigm shift—because survivors have economic independence, they can stand on their own, and some of them have gone further to even penetrate the most difficult spaces in terms of decision-making. Some of them are now even getting into political positions within their communities to become councillors. They become village heads, they become members of Parliament.”

Mobilizing survivors for structural change

Women and Land in Zimbabwe (WLZ) mobilizes survivors to become agents of structural change by creating platforms for them to present their experiences and demands directly to policymakers. This survivor-driven process has set a powerful precedent of grassroots influence in policymaking and has contributed to tangible legal reforms.

Furthermore, the organization’s advocacy around land rights enables survivors to access a critical economic resource in Zimbabwe’s rural communities. With greater financial stability, many survivors have moved beyond crisis—creating futures defined by growth, confidence, and possibility. In doing so, several have taken on leadership roles in their communities and within government. “They have reached this extent because they have the means or the economic advantage of penetrating such spaces,” WLZ highlights.

Advocacy wins establish land rights for women

WLZ actively engages traditional leaders, policymakers, and land reform authorities to raise awareness about the exclusion of women from land access and ownership and to challenge entrenched patriarchal systems that have historically favored male land ownership. In collaboration with women’s rights organizations and civil society networks, WLZ has played a key role in shaping national-level reforms. These collective efforts have led to significant policy wins, such as the inclusion of gender-equal land access provisions in the draft of the National Gender-Sensitive Land Policy and the securing of constitutional provisions to legally encourage and ensure women’s access to land.

At the community level, WLZ has supported rural women in asserting and securing their land rights through both local government channels and traditional leadership structures. These efforts have resulted in increased land allocations to women, recognition of joint land ownership within marriage, and stronger protections for widows’ rights to remain on family land.

In recent years, WLZ has continued their policy engagement with the Zimbabwe Land Commission, Members of Parliament, and customary leaders to bridge the gap between policy commitments and real-world implementation. As a result, there has been a gradual shift in social norms, with women increasingly recognized not only as land users but as rightful landowners and key decision-makers in natural resource governance.

Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security

“We feel that the issue of access to land, it’s a major impediment towards the advancement of women. We feel that it’s a unique form of economic violence. The fact that women do not own the means of production or the major source of livelihood, which happens to be land.”

About the Program

WLZ advances the economic rights of rural women and girls by helping them access, manage, and own land. The organization was founded in response to a tragic incident in which several women subjected to economic abuse took their own lives. Operating in areas where agriculture is the primary source of livelihood, WLZ sees land rights as fundamental to women’s safety, autonomy, and economic security—as well as to achieving gender equality and sustainable development in Zimbabwe.

WLZ advocates for gender-equitable land reforms, increased recognition of women’s contributions to agriculture, and stronger protections for women’s land rights under both statutory and customary legal systems. The organization coordinates member-based women’s groups that serve as hubs for land rights education, peer support, and referrals for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). The groups are led by community-based volunteers who also provide psychosocial support, connect survivors to essential services, and lead outreach efforts to challenge harmful norms that perpetuate violence. Through this grassroots network, the organization also supports rural women in engaging with decision-making spaces and advocating for policies that reflect their lived experiences.

Program Development and Key Strategies

WLZ identified the following strategies as critical to the success of their work to secure land rights for rural women and girls:

Catalyzing change through networks of mutual support
Centering survivors in policy advocacy
Engaging men in GBV prevention and response

Catalyzing change through networks of mutual support

Women’s groups serve as hubs for support, rights education, and referrals to services

WLZ brings rural women together through groups consisting of the organization’s members that meet regularly to discuss land rights, share knowledge, and provide peer support. Community volunteers facilitate these gatherings, creating safe spaces to explore issues around land access and gender-based violence (GBV). “We provide facilitators with trainings, conduct dialogues, and launch campaigns to empower or educate women on their rights when it comes to access to land,” says WLZ.

Group facilitators are trained on how to refer IPV survivors to WLZ so that the organization can provide direct support or make referrals to other partners for legal, medical, and psychosocial support services. Facilitators also assist with psychosocial support when a survivor comes back into the community. By fostering solidarity and community resilience, these groups create vital pathways for survivors to heal, regain stability, and assert their economic rights, while also strengthening community bonds and extending WLZ’s reach to provide programming to more survivors.

Regional partnerships extend impact

WLZ’s women’s groups foster deep community trust, increasing the organization’s visibility at both local and municipal levels. By linking with the Rural Women’s Assembly—a self-organized network spanning eleven countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)—WLZ reinforces regional solidarity and collective action. This alliance has developed a shared agenda with priorities for rural women’s land rights across the region, which supports WLZ’s in-country advocacy, especially around protecting women from being pushed off their land.¹ These strategic alliances thus amplify WLZ’s impact, expanding access to support networks and enabling survivors across the region to assert their rights with greater confidence and collective strength.

Supportive alliances strengthen resistance to political hostility

Alliances also provide critical support to organizations in the region as they navigate challenges posed by hostile government security forces. Through these regional platforms, organizations help each other by providing solidarity and shared strategies that strengthen their courage and sustain their efforts. “We have noted that the experiences that we are having in Zimbabwe, they are the same across the region,” WLZ comments. “We are happy to say that in these platforms, we are able to share our success stories, and some of the regional countries are replicating programs or activities in their respective countries based on experiences that we have shared with them.”

Centering survivors in policy advocacy

Creating opportunities for survivors in policymaking spaces

WLZ combines their grassroots organizing with survivor-led policy advocacy to address the economic drivers of GBV, specifically through land rights. At the core of their approach are regular policy dialogues that bring survivors face-to-face with decision-makers.

The organization explains: “We mobilize duty bearers, we mobilize stakeholders in different government ministries, the policymakers, and then we also invite our rural members who are experiencing violence or who are the survivors of the violence.” These dialogues aim to put power back in the hands of survivors, allowing them to shape the policies that they want to see.

Providing mentorship and guidance to bolster collective power

The survivor-led policymaking process begins at the community level, where survivors, with the support of WLZ, articulate the issues that impact them the most. Together, they create public agendas that reflect their lived experiences and then share these directly with policymakers. “Survivors present their demands to the policymakers—their experiences, what we want the policymakers to hear, and what they want the policymakers to take note of in the policy-making,” the organization says.

Engaging men in GBV prevention and response

Addressing GBV as a community responsibility

WLZ views all forms of GBV, including IPV, as a collective issue that requires the full engagement of the community to solve. Central to their approach is the belief that men must play an active role in dismantling patriarchal norms. As WLZ notes, “Men’s involvement may also help when dealing with intimate partner violence. The men who become aware, they will become enlightened about the benefits of empowering rural women . . . so that [rural women] become financially independent and experience less violence.”

WLZ identifies and supports men to become allies in the fight against GBV by leading awareness campaigns that highlight the economic roots of IPV and the benefits of women’s economic security. Recognizing the challenges of mobilizing men around these issues, the organization reaches them in familiar spaces such as community gatherings and sporting events. Engagement efforts include their Sports for Change campaign, which uses sports as a platform to foster dialogue and reflection on gender equality and non-violence.

The organization explains how crucial it is to engage male champions who actively challenge narratives that perpetuate GBV and work to reshape societal attitudes: “We have male champions within our communities . . . who help to reach other men, other structures in the community in trying to change the mindset on how they view women, on how we can change certain social and cultural norms which perpetuate violence.”

Survivor Leadership

“Within our organization, we have survivors who form part of the management. They’re part of the board of the organization. They are part of the decision-making processes and have the opportunity to share what they experienced in their lives.”

Survivor leadership is deeply embedded in WLZ’s structure and approach. Many survivors hold key decision-making roles, including positions on the board and within organizational management. WLZ also works closely with the women’s groups to ensure that survivors lead the design and direction of programming. During regular feedback sessions, survivors share their thoughts on the types of support they find most relevant and the organization uses this input to shape priorities and guide fundraising efforts.

Understanding Economic Harm in Context

In Zimbabwe, the lasting impact of colonization and deeply entrenched patriarchal systems shape women’s land rights. Despite constitutional provisions, women continue to face numerous political and social barriers to land ownership and access, ultimately affecting their economic security. The following key factors influence how survivors experience economic harm in their region:

Political and social forces create numerous obstacles for women’s land ownership and access
Insecure land rights perpetuate women’s economic instability
Women land rights defenders face political hostility

Political and social forces create numerous obstacles for women’s land ownership and access

Colonial legacy continues to impact present-day challenges in land ownership and access

Beginning in the late 19th century, colonization in Zimbabwe systematically stripped indigenous African communities of fertile agricultural land, barring them from land ownership and confining many to native reserves with poor-quality soil.² Further dispossession occurred after World War II when the colonial government incentivized white ex-servicemen’s immigration with farm grants and financial incentives.³

After gaining political independence in 1980, the Zimbabwean government sought to confront the injustices of colonial land theft through a series of land reform programs. These initiatives aimed to redistribute farmland from white settlers—who controlled a disproportionate share of the country’s prime agricultural land—and restore land ownership to Black Zimbabweans.⁴ In the decades that followed, land reform practices were repeatedly restructured as the country navigated political conflict, international sanctions, and an economic crisis marked by widespread unemployment and hyperinﬂation.⁵ Despite these restructurings, land and tenure laws were slow to advance land access for women, and land reform programs continued to favor men as the primary beneficiaries of resettlement land.⁶

Patriarchal systems restrict women’s access to land despite legal provisions

Due to the advocacy of WLZ and other allied organizations, the country’s constitution formally guarantees women’s access to resources, including land. However, customary laws and patriarchal traditions continue to undermine these rights. The organization reports that, in practice, women often can only access land through male relatives—typically husbands or brothers—resulting in limited control and insecure ownership rights. WLZ notes that cultural expectations around men as heads of households and landowners continue to undermine women’s land tenure security, despite their significant contributions to food production and household economies.

Additionally, land boards and local leadership structures are often male-dominated and tend to favor men in land adjudication processes, demonstrating the need for gender-equitable land governance. These persistent challenges underscore the gap between policy and practice and highlight the importance of legal literacy campaigns, continued advocacy on both the grassroots and national levels, gender-sensitive reform of customary systems, and holding institutions accountable for implementing constitutional guarantees.

Insecure land rights perpetuate women’s economic instability

Harm-doers exploit women’s lack of secure land rights

WLZ observes that land insecurity increases women’s exposure to GBV, particularly in situations of widowhood or separation, where women are often evicted from land that they have cultivated for years. Harm-doers take advantage of women’s precarious land rights to exert control over relationships and access land for themselves.

The organization highlights cases where widows were pressured by their late husband’s brother, the village head, or other men in positions of power to enter relationships in order to keep the land that they had inherited: “[The widow] owned land through her husband, and now she has lost the husband. This village man comes and says, ‘For you to stay on this land, you need to be my girlfriend, otherwise, you’ll be chased away.’”

For married women, since they typically access land through their husbands, they risk losing their land rights and facing economic insecurity in the event of separation or divorce. WLZ also notes that even when married women earn their own income, it is often controlled by their husbands or in-laws, leaving them with little control over their finances and compromising their economic autonomy.

Rural women are disproportionately impacted by limited access to land

Ownership of and access to land are especially significant for rural women, who frequently have less access to education, health care, and employment than urban residents have.⁷ “We work with rural women who are poor. They face a lot of violence because they don’t have access to land or the means of production,” WLZ notes. The organization emphasizes that land rights remain economically crucial for subsistence farming and selling harvested crops. Insecure land tenure thus undermines household food security and community development in addition to affecting individual women. WLZ adds, “[Rural women in poverty] don’t own land of their own, so they are not able to economically empower themselves or work for themselves. They don’t have a source of livelihood.”

Women land rights defenders face political hostility

Because land rights remain a highly contested issue in Zimbabwe, WLZ has faced threats to the safety of their staff. “When doing the work that we do, you are constantly at loggerheads with security forces because talking about land rights, especially in our own community, it’s something that is not taken easily,” the organization explains. They recall that others in the same line of work have faced violence, noting, “We fear for our lives and the lives of our loved ones because of that. . . . Recently, during the elections, we’ve had one incident, but we just feel that we need the courage to go on.”

The organization emphasizes the need for stronger protections for human rights defenders, solidarity from the broader civil society community, and international visibility to safeguard the work of grassroots activists. Their resilience highlights the courage it takes to advocate for justice in politically charged spaces, especially when doing so exposes one to personal risk.

Notes

Samina Dahlberg, Mercia Andrews, Lungisa Huna, Paula Cardoso, and Fiona Wilson, Rural Women’s Assembly: Celebrating Our Journey 2009-2019, Mowbray: Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE), 2019,
https://www.ruralwomensassembly.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/RWA-Celebrating-Our-Journey-2009-2019.pdf.
Rick de Satgé, “Zimbabwe – Context and Land Governance,” Land Portal, March 31, 2021. https://landportal.org/book/narratives/2021/zimbabwe.
Rick de Satgé, “Zimbabwe – Context and Land Governance.”
Nelson Marongwe, Redistributive Land Reform and Poverty Reduction in Zimbabwe, Cape Town: Institute for Poverty for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) / Institute of Development Studies, January 1, 2011, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08ae4ed915d622C000985/60332_Zimbabwe_Land_Reform.pdf.
Grasian Mkodzongi and Peter Lawrence, “The Fast-Track Land Reform and Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe,” Review of African Political Economy 46, no. 159 (2019): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2019.1622210.
Allison Goebel, “Zimbabwe’s ‘Fast Track’ Land Reform: What about women?” Gender, Place & Culture 12, no. 2 (2006):145-172, https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690500094799.
The Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, Zimbabwe National Strategy To Prevent and Address Gender Based Violence, 2023-2030, Harare: Government of Zimbabwe, 2023, https://zimbabwe.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/zimbabwe_national_gbv_strategy_2023_to_2030.pdf.