This article was first published in The Standard a newspaper in Zimbabwe in October 2017.
Every woman needs a private rescue fund (PRF) that only one trusted person knows about. That trusted person does not necessarily need to be someone you are living with. We are surviving in unpredictable and risky times and many families have lost everything they worked for, including their homes because a spouse/partner who was supposed to be knowledgeable about all things financial, made a gamble with family assets and lost. Yes, there are many others who have taken calculated risks with family assets and won, but this discussion is about women who find themselves in a financially bankrupt situation and the importance of them achieving financial freedom, that benefits the whole family, but most importantly, themselves.
The issue here is, it is risky business to transfer the responsibility of the family’s financial management to one person because no one person or gender has the monopoly on great ideas. The PRF is a hedge against poor financial decision-making, mitigation for unforeseen circumstances or your own retirement if you are lucky to get good innings. Where you locate your PRF is key. Do not bank the money, for when you need it, might not be readily available. Cash is currently in short supply within the banking system and when you need your loot, the banks will be dispensing $50 per day and you might need to wake up at 4.00am to get that miserable amount. The best way is to apply for a safe deposit box and thus far the best one in town is at CABS by Northridge Park near the racecourse.
To achieve marital status is a blessing from the Almighty, not an achievement. To marry and then agree to down tools waiting for a spouse to fund your lifestyle all the way to retirement is as good as setting up an open fresh meat stall in the middle of Hwange National Park and expect to come of there with all limbs intact. A husband is not a viable retirement plan, neither is any spouse for that matter. Your children are not viable retirement plans either. As a woman, you have to work hard and smarter and achieve your very own financial freedom.
If you are an adult woman of 50 years and above, is not deaf, dumb, blind or incapacitated in whatever shape or form and you find yourself flat broke, all is not lost, not yet, but it is most likely your fault you find yourself in this quandary because you should have made different choices when time was on your side. If you are an adult female, who is in an unhappy or abusive relationship, by staying put for economic reasons, you are in trouble because the trauma you endure everyday is likely to distract you from achieving financial freedom. If you are a married woman, with a high achieving spouse, who has convinced you that you do not need to work because he makes more than enough bacon for both of you, you need to go back to the drawing board and ask yourself whether this is truly what you signed up for. No one achieves financial freedom from controlled handouts. Often, to make you redundant is a control mechanism to ensure financial dependence. At the end of the day, it is your choice what outcomes you desire for yourself and your life.
Being married does not necessarily entitle you to his funds. Even if you control the family bank account, you still need to be accountable. Staying at home doing nothing except the school run is a foreign concept. Our mothers worked, so did our grandmothers and those who came before them. They worked and the clever ones kept their PRFs hidden under mattresses. I am not advocating the same, but there are smart ways to work for your financial freedom even though you are a stay home Mum.
In an ideal world, when one spouse is the bread - winner, you are entitled to a share because you indirectly contribute in a supportive role. But in the real world, in the event of say, a divorce (I am not wishing that on anyone) it is always hard to prove you did. In the eventuality that he changes his mind about promises made agreed to whilst under the crispy comfort of the warm sheets, you could easily find yourself vulnerable, wondering how the hell you got there. Stand up, use your hands and do something, now! It is not too late. After all many men are not coping. Often, when the burden of bread - winning becomes unbearable for them, they start viewing you as a “chipfukuto”/weevil, and abuse in all its dimensions sets in.
Many women are already vulnerable in their matrimonial settings and with courage, could be making different choices. Many are trying, but many more are emboldened with a thick blanket of confusion and dizziness. If you are the other woman, a “small house”, living large without any knowledge of his financial affairs or who owns the house you are living in, beware, for one day you might just find yourself and your children in the streets. There are many scenarios that women find themselves in and the ones listed above are a few examples.
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The point I am making is, women, regardless of their marital status need to work at achieving financial freedom for themselves. We have come a long way. Since independence in 1980, there has been sections of the law that have been reformed in order to include and empower women. Some of the several pieces of legislation as outlined by Machirori F, in a January 2015 article entitled, “15 Legal Reforms that Impacted Zimbabwean Women’s Rights in the 1980s and 1990s” published on herzimbabwe.co.zw include but are not restricted to the following:
• Equal Pay Regulations (1980)
o This provides for equal pay for equal work, in addition to providing for half an hour’s time before and after lunch for breastfeeding.
• Customary Law and Primary Courts Act (1980)
o This piece of legislation was established to empowered community courts to administer maintenance laws. It also provides for maintenance claims for women in unregistered customary marriages.
• Legal Age of Majority Act (1982)
o This confers full legal capacity on every Zimbabwean aged 18 years and above. It also gave daughters the capacity to inherit their fathers’ estates. It also authorised women (including widows) to qualify as guardians of minors and to administer deceased estates.
• Labour Relations Act (1984)
o This provided for 3 months’ maternity leave with some reasonable reduction in salary. The Act outlaws discrimination against any employee on grounds of race, tribe, place of origin, political opinion, colour, creed, or sex, in respect of wages, promotion, recruitment, training and retrenchment.
• Matrimonial Causes Act No 33 (1985)
o This provides for equitable distribution of matrimonial assets upon divorce. It also removes the ‘fault principle’ (that is, when one partner is said to be at fault in the breakdown of the relationship) as grounds for divorce.
• Public Service Pensions (Amendment) Regulations (1985)
o This allowes for women to contribute to medical aid schemes in their own right. Female contributors in public service could also now contribute to their pension at the same rate (7.5%) of pensionable enrolments as men.
• Deceased Person’s Family Maintenance (Amendment) Act (1987)
o This provides for the surviving spouse and children – in the case of death – have a right to continue occupying the matrimonial house, use the household goods and effects they were using before the deceased’s death, use and enjoy crops and animals belonging to the matrimonial estate. Property grabbing by relatives of the deceased therefore became illegal.
• Infanticide Act (1991)
o This Act allows the crime of infanticide to replace the murder charge out of consideration of a mother’s post-natal depression, rejection by boyfriend/ husband, parents and/or relatives.
• Deceased Person’s Family Maintenance (Amendment) Act (1987)
o This provides for the surviving spouse and children – in the case of death – have a right to continue occupying the matrimonial house, use the household goods and effects they were using before the deceased’s death, use and enjoy crops and animals belonging to the matrimonial estate. Property grabbing by relatives of the deceased therefore became illegal.
• Infanticide Act (1991)
o This Act allows the crime of infanticide to replace the murder charge out of consideration of a mother’s post-natal depression, rejection by boyfriend/ husband, parents and/or relatives.
• Deeds Registry Amendment Act (1991)
o The Deeds Registry Amendment Act allows women to register immovable property in their own name (and can apply to urban and rural commercial land where title deeds were obtainable).
• White Paper on Marriage Inheritance (1993)
o This was proposed as a replacement of the African Marriages Act with legislation equally applicable to all Zimbabweans. As such, it seeks to give the surviving spouse, and children, equal rights to inheritance as opposed to one heir.
• Administration of Estates Amendment Act (1997)
o This Act provides for the rights of the surviving spouse/s, in an intestate estate, over the matrimonial home, and also for them to receive a share in the deceased spouses intestate estate. An intestate estate is one in which the deceased’s estate is not effectively disposed of by the deceased’s will.
• Maintenance (Amendments) Act (2002)
o Under this act, the non-custodial parent is required to contribute regularly to the maintenance of minor children in the custody of the other parent. In the Act, the courts are empowered to attach terminal benefits (e.g. pension benefits) accruing to the person who was ordered to pay maintenance if he/ she subsequently left employment. A woman could now file maintenance claims from the court nearest to her, with the man legally obliged to travel to that court. A woman could also claim maintenance from an ex-spouse any time after divorce if there was need for it, and a woman in an unregistered customary marriage was entitled to maintenance from the man after dissolution of the union.
• Domestic Violence Act (2006)
o To make provision for the protection and relief of victims of domestic violence and to provide for matters connected with or incidental to the foregoing.
Despite the enabling legal framework, more than three and a half decades of independence in Zimbabwe, the status of women, gender equality and most importantly the issue of economic empowerment of women, have reached an all time low. It is a low I have never seen nor witnessed before. Less than five women are heading up Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listed companies. Less than five women are CEOs of State Owned Enterprises, less than 5 women are permanent secretaries of government ministries. Women’s representation of parastatal and private sector company boards are negligible.
Although this is the situation at the higher echelons of formal employment, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) 2016 report entitled, Understanding Equality in Zimbabwe: Women and Men, Zimbabwean women make up 54% of the workforce in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sector, 62,1% of the wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles. Women also dominate education at 57%, health and social welfare work at 64,2%. Female dominance also extends to categories defined as ‘other service activities’ at 57,6% and ‘activities of households’ with 79,5%. But gainful employment of women is not necessarily translating to savings or wealth creation by women. As women get older and leave employment for whatever reason, the feminization of poverty spikes. When the data on the predominance of women in employment is disaggregated it shows that many women are employed at the lower end of the market including the informal sector where their existence is survivalist.
Financial literacy amongst women, both educated and uneducated is low and generally speaking women are less confident to make good savings and investment decisions with their own money. The tendency by most women is to fund household expenditures with their money throughout their working lives. As a result, on retirement, many women are exposed, without adequate financial security even to cope in unplanned emergencies.
The deafening silence of the women’s movement on many issues affecting women has grown acute. A country with a high propensity for excluding women and relegating them to the fringes of society involved in menial and survivalist roles, in essence marginalizing them, a whole constituency of 52% of the population, is a country going nowhere slowly. The fact is no one gender should be preferred over another and if you leave more than half of your population behind, progress will be hampered.
In my next write-up, I will talk about several ways to achieve financial freedom for women.
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