Masters Dissertation

This dissertation examines the resourcefulness of Zimbabwe’s informal traders (mostly women) in creating their own social security schemes. They operate in such a bizzare hyper-inflationary economic environment of massive unemployment that the cost (for formal sector, majority male, employees) of claiming a benefit from the state’s social security system (which excludes the informal sector) often […]

The Kenyan export flower industry, which generates millions of dollars worth of precious foreign exchange for the nation, has grown immensely since its inception and has created employment for many Kenyans, especially its largely poor and uneducated population of rural women. This research, focusing on five such farms in Kenya, aims at assessing the efficacy […]

Using the unique grounded women’s law approach, this research reveals how the gender-insensitive and essentially identical World Bank inspired rules and regulations of the growing number of unregulated, self-governing Women’s Village Savings and Loan Schemes (WVSLSs) in Malawi are collapsing because they are defeating rather than achieving their avowed objective of economically empowering their women […]

This study notes that Malawi’s Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, 2006 is such a positive development with regard to protecting women from physical domestic violence. However, it emphasises that there are operationalization problems with the Police Victims Support Unit (VSU) as one agency of the Act’s implementation. These problems have a negative bearing on the […]

Domestic violence (DV) is a problem which occurs in some UN families (meaning families of UN staff members). As is the case with other families in Zimbabwe, women and children are mostly victims of DV within these families. However, sometimes, DV victims in UN families are faced with challenges which make it difficult for them […]

This study focuses on examining the academic assessment and examination, systems and structures as they are implemented by the University of Zimbabwe’s College of Health Sciences, to establish their efficacy in the prevention of sexual harassment of students by staff members. The study was therefore undertaken with a view to analyse and possibly pin point […]

This research examines the rehabilitation and re-integration programmes for female prisoners in at least 3 prisons in Malawi and the experiences of women ex-prisoners after their release from prison. In breach of its obligations under both binding and persuasive international and regional human rights instruments, including CEDAW, the ICCPR, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules […]

The need to scale up financial inclusion efforts is as imperative as the need to develop potentially useful approaches to planning, policy implementation and programming in order to engender socio-economic rights for women in Zimbabwe. This research was carried out in Banket, a town 96 kilometres West of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, in Mashonaland West province […]

The recent enactment of Malawi’s HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Management) Act, 2017 allows, among other things, health service providers to exercise their discretion and inform sexual partners of their being at significant risk of being infected by their HIV positive sexual partner. This is in line with the intentions of policy and law makers […]

This research examines the various dimensions of unfair discrimination against women in formal and informal marriages in the City of Harare’s low income homeownership policy and practice. It is based on a case study of Budiriro a high density suburb of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The research is based on a wide range of […]