job Description
Background:
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.
Zimbabwe seeks to become an upper middle-income country by 2030. The attainment of gender equality and women’s rights as afforded to all female citizens in the Constitution is critical for Zimbabwe’s attainment of the Vision 2030 goals. The Vision is based on the Transitional Stabilization Programme (October 2018 to December 2020) and two successive five-year National Development Strategies (NDSs), the first of which has been developed, and NDS 2, which includes gender as a priority within the Social Development, Gender and Social Protection Thematic Priority Area.
The country has signed and ratified the major international and regional gender equality and women’s right commitments. These include the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Platform for Action, the Protocol to the African Charter on Peoples and Human Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Southern African Development Community Protocol on Gender and Development, among others.
Closing the political, economic, and socio-economic inequalities between females and males, however, remains one of the country’s major development challenges. The country’s gender inequalities also are situated and compounded by a multi-hazard humanitarian environment and uneven economic reforms. In 2020, the country joined the global community in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of the global El Nino have pushed the country further into prolonged droughts and in April 2024, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe declared a state of emergency as the drought was declared a National Disaster. The country also issued the Drought Flash Appeal (March 2024-March 2025) requesting US$351 million from humanitarian partners to target close to three million people in need.
Zimbabwe has managed to close gender disparities in education, but a slightly higher proportion of females (27% compared to 23.1% males) continue to leave school due to gender stereotypes and norms that encourage females to marry, unplanned pregnancies leading to marriage and poverty in rural homes where the education of boys is favoured over that of girls. Gender stereotypes and norms also lead to more women who attend tertiary institutions to choose fields of studies that provide career options that balance their responsibilities between jobs and a family.
Agriculture continues to be one of the mainstays of the country’s economy and the 2019 Labour Force Survey shows 11,235,467 in the sector comprising of 56.9% females and 43.01% males. A ZimStat survey to measure SDG 5.a.1 (Proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land by sex) shows about 45% of the population in agriculture have ownership or secure rights over agricultural land with women constituting a smaller proportion (44.9 percent) than males (45.9 percent), and women constitute more than half (56.4 percent) of the owners or right-bearers of agricultural land. However, in terms of agricultural labour, gender disparities emerge with more women in the agricultural sector being in vulnerable employment. Women constitute about 81% of contributing family workers in the sector and females are only 38% of the employees in paid employment in agriculture.
Gender‑based violence (GBV) and harmful practices remain widespread. According to 2023/24 ZDHS, 30% of women aged 15–49 had experienced physical or sexual violence, with intimate partner violence higher in rural areas (32%) than urban (22%). Gender inequality, harmful norms, poverty, and climate shocks continue to fuel vulnerabilities, limiting women and girls’ autonomy and access to justice. HIV prevalence among adults (15–49) declined from 12.69% in 2019 to 10.49% in 2023 but remains higher among females (14.4%) than males (8.7%). Adolescents and youth face high unmet need for contraception (14.6%), teenage pregnancy (23%), early marriage (33.2% of women aged 20–49 married by 18), and disproportionate HIV vulnerability, with young women nearly twice as affected as young men (4.7% vs. 2.6%).
In June 2025, UN Women and three UN agencies (UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF) began implementation of a new UN Joint Programme entitled: Sustaining the Gains: Strengthening Accountability to Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in Zimbabwe which builds on several achievements of the Zimbabwe Spotlight Initiative (2019-2023). The new UN Joint Programme will directly contribute to the implementation of Zimbabwe’s High-Level Political Compact on Ending Gender-Based Violence & Harmful Practices (HLPC) (2021-2030). The programme also will contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 and continue to build on the comprehensive model approach of the Zimbabwe Spotlight Initiative with a specific focus on strengthening gender equality and women’s rights accountability systems and mechanisms.
The Consultant will be reporting to the UN Women Deputy Country Representative and will be supported by the UN Women Joint Programme Coordinator and the Inter-Agency Programme Team. The UN Women Zimbabwe Deputy Country Representative will be the point of contact on the contract and payment issues.
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