Women in Zimbabwe push for recognition of 'invisible' domestic labour
Every day, before delivering custom-sewn clothes to her clients' doorsteps in eastern Zimbabwe, Cecilia Makumbe first takes care of all the household chores.
“I clean the house, do laundry, fetch water and water the garden,” the 43-year-old mother of four, who lives in Mafuke village outside Mutare, Zimbabwe's fourth largest city, told RFI.
“By the time I start my sewing job, I am already exhausted.”
In her village, there is limited access to resources like water and clean cooking stoves.
Makumbe walks nearly a kilometre to fetch water from a shallow well because the nearest community borehole is double the distance away. Cecilia Makumbe on her way to deliver custom-made clothes to her clients in Mutare.
Unequal burden
Her story is similar to that of many Zimbabwean women who are losing opportunities because of the time they spend providing unpaid labour.
Proposed legislation known as the Unpaid Care and Domestic Work Bill aims to address this. Drafted in 2024, it seeks to put in place policies to support women and girls who carry out the overwhelming majority of domestic labour.
While the bill has not yet been enacted, its supporters are renewing their push. A motion to formally recognise chores like cooking and cleaning as essential economic labour was first introduced in parliament late last year and debated by legislators this week.
Sizalokuhle Ncube, a communications manager at the Women's Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence, a women's rights organisation lobbying for the cause, says unpaid care and domestic work is not a private household issue – it has economic, social and political consequences.
“Women continue to carry a disproportionate share of cooking, cleaning, childcare, caring for older persons and persons with disabilities, collecting water and other essential household responsibilities,” she said. Women who live in areas of Zimbabwe with limited access to clean water do their laundry using water from rivers and shallow wells.
Women spend about 5.9 hours a day on unpaid care, domestic and volunteer work, compared with 3.8 hours for men, according to a 2025 survey conducted by the state-owned Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency.
Ncube says unpaid workload limits women's time, economic opportunities, participation in public life and political leadership.
Makumbe took a six-month sewing course, but she could not further her studies because she had to take care of children after she got married.
“I could not afford childcare. So I could not continue,” she said.
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Easing the load
On 20 August, lawmakers in the National Assembly, Zimbabwe's lower house of parliament, debated the motion to recognise domestic and unpaid care work as a critical part of national development.
Lawmakers agreed the government should develop a comprehensive policy on unpaid domestic labour, and put money into infrastructure and social protection programmes that would help ease the workload. They also called for a survey to calculate the economic value of such labour and its contribution to GDP.
Senator Maybe Mbowa, chair of the Zimbabwe Women's Parliamentary Caucus, says those backing the motion want concrete steps to make chores safer and less time-consuming.
“It is not that we want salaries. We simply want the government to intervene and reduce the burden of domestic work on women,” she told RFI.
“We want the introduction of clean cooking initiatives like gas and solar-powered boreholes in rural areas to reduce the time women walk to get clean water and fetch firewood.” Many women in Zimbabwe prepare meals using firewood that they collect themselves.
With a gender-responsive budget that addresses their needs, Mbowa says, women will use the time saved to build the economy.
The government, in partnership with international humanitarian organisations, says it is already promoting clean cookstoves and installing solar-powered boreholes in rural areas.
“We are promoting clean cooking technologies which reduce time spent collecting firewood and exposure to health risks,” said Mavis Sibanda, a permanent secretary for the Ministry of Women Affairs.
The state is also investing in rural water supplies “to reduce the time women spend on essential household tasks like fetching water”, she said.
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African precedents
Ncube says women's demands are that care work be recognised, valued, redistributed and supported through public policy.
“We want care to be treated as an issue of economic justice, gender equality and public policy, not as an invisible responsibility that automatically falls on women,” she said.
Zimbabwe is not the first country in Africa to take action on unpaid domestic labour.
Kenya last year adopted a National Care Policy, which seeks to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care while improving conditions for paid care workers.
And in 2024, Rwanda revised its family law to explicitly recognise unpaid care work as contributing to marital property and value it at 10 to 39 percent of jointly acquired assets.
It has also deployed energy-efficient cookstoves and tanks to collect rainwater in communities across the country.
Makumbe hopes Zimbabwe can adopt similar measures, and that greater access to safe water and clean cooking technologies will ease the burden of her household responsibilities.
“I want to have more time for my sewing and to expand my business,” she said.