education and the public service, inroads have already been made
to advance the status of women.
12.3 Government, through ZIMSTAT, has already started to compile
Gender Disaggregated Data (GDD) to facilitate the monitoring of
the situation of women in Zimbabwe. These efforts, however, still
need to be extended to all sectors of society to ensure that a clear
picture of the situation of women is adequately portrayed in official
statistics.
12.4 Despite these significant efforts to promote the rights of women,
this report has demonstrated that a lot more still needs to be done
to enhance the status of women and improve their quality of life in
general. Gender inequalities and imbalances continue to manifest
themselves in several sectors. In politics and decision-making
women continue to lag behind their male counterparts, despite the
commitment of Government. Women have consistently owned less
than 20% of land since 1980 despite efforts through legislative
and administrative measures to ensure that women and men have
equal and/or equitable access to control over and ownership of
land over the years. Furthermore, women continue to bear the
brunt of the HIV pandemic. They not only continue to be
disproportionately infected by the virus, but they also bear the
brunt of the impact of the HIV epidemic as they carry a
disproportionate share of the burden of caring for their ill relatives
and those sick members of the community through home based
care. All this is done with little or no remuneration. Women and
girls constitute the majority of the victims of gender and domestic
violence and sexual abuse.
12.5 It is in recognition of the need for continued and sustained efforts
to address these and many other forms of discrimination against
women that Government has revised the 2004 National Gender
Policy, the National Gender-Based Violence Strategy, the National
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