Mercy Jaravani – a story of the unyielding fight and resolve for women’s rights

Mercy Jaravani is the National Coordinator for the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ). WCoZ is the national convener for women’s rights and empowerment in Zimbabwe committed to advocacy and amplifying the Beijing Platform for Action. 

According to Mercy patriarchy remains the biggest threat to feminism today. ‘’We are looking at institutions that continue to sustain patriarchy. It’s become sophisticated and emboldened in oppressing women’s rights. We have seen the depoliticisation of women’s rights and the feminist agenda with attempts to water down the struggle for feminism,’’ she says. 

Sustaining the lasting impact and change that has been brought about by feminism through the years is quite important more so now. Mercy encourages patriots to stay rooted in solidarity wading off any external voices that try to downplay the struggles of women and girls. 

Reflecting on the current global wave of funding cuts disproportionately affecting rightsholder communities of women and girls- she highlights this manifestation as a new evolution of emboldened patriarchy. ‘’While I acknowledge the US has set a bad precedence for women’s rights with regards to derailing progress; we have seen other development partners jump on the bandwagon and develop similar strategies,’’. ‘’It’s sad that this reality is turning back the clock on the gains we’ve made over the years to a time where we are being forced to justify why women’s rights matter,’’ she adds. 

As her organisation tries to wade through limited resources, the message has been clear, they’ve had to cut back on the services they offer. The reach of their work has been impacted affecting their ability to reach rightsholder communities in hard-to-reach areas. ‘’In Zimbabwe up to 30 women’s rights organisations were affected by USAID’s Stop-Work-Order and had to readjust their 2025 budgets ranging from 10-80 per cent. Some were even on the brink of closure,’’ she says. 

In adapting to the volatile funding landscape, she paints a picture of the biggest lessons emerging for many women’s rights organisations. This is the recognition that the feminist movement needs a rebirth and renewal; re-evaluating the nature of partnerships and examining unbalanced power dynamics within the funding models. ‘’This is giving us a lot to think about while still organising and continuing the work even with the limited resources we have,’’ she says. 

Recognising solidarity as a critical feminist value that will sustain the feminist movement in this season, she opines that collective allyship should be seen as a silver lining. ‘’When women’s rights organisations received the notification of funding cuts, we quickly caucused together, seeing where we can apply band aids and cover each other. We came up with solutions such as sharing office space, free Wi-Fi- generally holding space for each other,’’ she says. 

‘’Strength, solidarity and spirit- these are the values we need to keep going,’’ she ends in her call to courage in these unprecedented times.