Women remain underrepresented at the top of Zimbabwe's finance function, but the picture is changing — and the leaders driving that change are candid about both the progress and the distance still to travel.
A Changing Pipeline
Professional accounting bodies in Zimbabwe report steadily rising numbers of women qualifying as chartered accountants, a leading indicator for the CFO pipeline over the next decade. The bottleneck, several leaders note, is less at entry level and more at the mid-to-senior transition, where career breaks and informal sponsorship gaps still bite hardest.
What's Working
Structured mentorship programmes, deliberate sponsorship by senior leaders of both genders, and visible role models are the three interventions cited most consistently as making a measurable difference. Several of Zimbabwe's most senior female finance executives now mentor formally through professional bodies and through CFO Zimbabwe's own community.
"I didn't have someone who looked like me two levels up when I was coming through. I make sure that's not true for the women coming up behind me."
Looking Ahead
The consensus among the leaders we spoke with: representation at the top of finance in Zimbabwe will keep improving, but only if the interventions that are working today continue to be resourced and championed deliberately, rather than assumed to happen on their own.
