Masters Dissertation

This research, conducted by a sociologist, investigates the effectiveness of the law in dealing with the harmful cultural and religious practice of child marriage which is usually forced on girls (as opposed to boys) and is particularly rampant in Chief Zimunya’s area in the province of Manicaland, Zimbabwe. He uses a case study approach of […]

Child prostitution has become a global phenomenon which raises concern and alarm. In Zimbabwe children as young as eight years old are engaging in prostitution in the area along the Mukuvisi River and in Epworth, Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Child prostitution has become an acceptable source of livelihood in these two communities, due to a […]

The author of this dissertation’s love of her rural upbringing has long made her alive to the embeddedness of rural women’s lives in land for livelihoods and in turn has fostered her desire as a lawyer to improve their land rights. Taking the example of rural women in Seke communal land on the outskirts of […]

The objective of this research was to explore ways and means of strengthening equal rights between a woman and a man married under customary law compared to a man and woman married under statutory law in Zambia. Sexual rights are embraced by a number of human rights instruments. The inability of the Government to enact […]

Studying on SEARCWL’s Women’s Law Programme made the writer, a Correctional Officer in the Zambia Correctional Services (ZCS), reconsider the situation of women in correctional facilities from a different more gendered perspective than has hitherto been the case in former research studies. He discovered that this involved an ‘unlearning/relearning process’ which encouraged him to adopt […]

This study sought to investigate the impact of the Women’s Enterprise Fund (WEF) on women’s economic empowerment. This was informed by the fact that despite women constituting almost half of Kenya’s population, they experience socio-economic inequality. Yet, economic empowerment of women is a key issue in the process of the development of the country. Access […]

In Zimbabwe, there is a growing concern that while reported rapes against juveniles are soaring and outstripping those against adults, case finalisation figures against perpetrators of the crime remain low despite the application of the Multi-Sectoral Approach (MSA). This research, therefore, sought to assess the effectiveness of the MSA in the speedy finalisation of juvenile […]

This research sought to discover whether women and girls in today’s Zimbabwe experience more or less public gender-based violence (GBV) or violations of their Constitutionally protected human rights to move and associate freely in public than their predecessors during the decade following the country’s independence in 1980. Being the target of jeers, catcalls, insults, indecent […]

This dissertation interrogates the provision of and access to social security from a gendered perspective with particular reference to women with disabilities in the informal sector in Zimbabwe. This is an area of great interest to the writer who has and continues to interact extensively with women with disabilities at a personal and professional level, […]