While the nation recently paused this Easter Holiday to reflect on themes of sacrifice, renewal, and the triumph of the spirit, many Zimbabwean women returned to their desks facing a far less divine reality.
For the high-achieving woman in our society, the corporate ladder is not merely steep; it is often slick with the grease of character assassination.
In our boardrooms, government offices, and even on our film sets, we are witnessing a disturbing cultural reflex where a woman’s rise is rarely credited to her midnight oil, but rather to her perfume.
It is a world where competence is treated as a secondary trait, and a promotion is often viewed as a transaction of the flesh rather than a triumph of the mind.
I recently spoke with a senior executive at a prominent, ZSE-listed company in Zimbabwe who should, by all rights, be celebrating a career milestone.
Instead, she walks the corridors of her office in a state of perpetual hyper-vigilance.
Despite a CV that boasts more academic qualifications and years of experience than the male superiors who promoted her, the “watercooler talk” has centered entirely on her physical appearance.
Her colleagues, both men and women, openly whisper that her “light skin” and “curves” were the true catalysts for her advancement.
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This narrative is as exhausted as it is toxic, the assumption that a beautiful woman cannot possibly be brilliant enough to earn her seat.
This poison does not stop at the office door, it follows her home, tainting her private life to the point where her own husband felt compelled to privately investigate her fidelity.
When professional success becomes a laboratory for destroying a woman’s domestic peace, we have moved past simple office politics into a realm of systemic psychological warfare.
Psychologically, this phenomenon is rooted in what experts call Devaluation Theory.
When a woman enters a traditionally male-dominated space, her presence creates a cognitive dissonance for those who subscribe to rigid patriarchal norms.
To resolve this internal conflict, peers resort to “sexualising” her achievements. By attributing her promotion to nepotism or an illicit relationship with a higher-up, they strip away her agency and merit, making their own mediocrity feel more comfortable.
It is a protective mechanism for the “boys’ club,” ensuring that even when a woman breaks the glass ceiling, she is forced to do so while bleeding from a thousand cuts of gossip.
This isn’t isolated to the corporate sector, in the Zimbabwean film industry, actresses frequently complain that despite carrying equal screen time and more complex roles than their male counterparts, they are paid significantly less.
Even in the arts, a woman who secures a lead role is met with the cynical assumption that she didn’t out-act the competition, but rather “connected” better with the director behind closed doors.
Research consistently shows that while men are often promoted based on their “potential,” women are held to a standard of “proven performance.”
Yet, as we see in the case of the executive mentioned above, even when the performance is proven and the education is superior, the goalposts are moved to “likability” and “moral suspicion.”
Most influential positions are still handed to men as a default, and when a woman finally breaks through, the immediate search for a “hidden benefactor” begins. This creates a “Tall Poppy Syndrome” where women feel the need to shrink themselves or hide their success to avoid being targeted.
As we pack away our Easter decorations and return to the grind of the working week, we must carry the spirit of justice into our workplaces.
It is time for listed companies to move beyond superficial gender policies that only look good in annual reports.
We need robust, anonymous reporting channels for workplace bullying and gender-based character assassination.
For the men in these spaces, accountability starts with the refusal to be a silent spectator; when you hear a colleague attribute a woman’s hard-earned rank to her looks, call it out.
A woman’s beauty is not a disqualifier for her brains, and it is time we stop punishing the most competent among us for being twice as good while being treated as half as worthy. The glass ceiling is hard enough to break without society lining it with shards of slander.
Joyline Chiedza Basira is an entrepreneur and human rights activist using her media lens to write the column she needed to read years ago. She can be contacted at [email protected]
