Recently, I had a conversation with a close friend about women and aging in Zimbabwe. As we discussed menopause, she casually listed all the “rules” society imposes on women as they grow older: “After a certain age, a woman must dress modestly, stop wearing bright colours, and avoid anything that draws attention to her. She should no longer discuss sex openly, and if she’s menopausal, she must accept that her ‘usefulness’ in marriage is diminished because she can no longer bear children”.
Her words stunned me. Not because they were new. I had heard them before but because she recited them as if they were natural, unquestionable truths.
What disturbed me most was how these expectations limit women, forcing them into silent resignation rather than empowering them to embrace aging with dignity and freedom.
In Zimbabwe, cultural stereotypes around women’s sexuality, childbirth, and aging shape how society treats menopausal women. These norms disadvantage women, stripping them of autonomy and reducing their value to reproductive capacity. It is time to challenge these harmful beliefs and create space for women to age on their own terms.
Looking at Zimbabwean cultures, a woman’s worth is intrinsically tied to her ability to bear children. From a young age, girls are socialised to believe that motherhood is their primary purpose.
Marriage is often framed as a means to procreation, and infertility, or the end of fertility, can lead to marginalisation. Menopause becomes a cultural expiration date, the moment society decides a woman's value has depleted.
When fertility ends, so too does her standing in many marriages, as some men, steeped in patriarchal logic, trade menopausal wives for younger women, deeming them no longer sexually relevant or “useful”.
Women, who resist the docile grandmother mould, who dare to remain vibrant, outspoken, or sexually autonomous face ridicule, branded as inappropriate or even “loose”. And for those financially tethered to marriage, this biological transition can trigger devastating consequences: sudden abandonment strips not just companionship but survival itself, leaving women economically stranded at the very stage of life when security should be guaranteed.
- Thieves target city boreholes
- Illegal smuggling of US-made weapons from Afghanistan to Pakistan and its trade: a thriving business in Pakistan
- Dynamite comes in small packages in Pastor Chirinda
- BCC engages 2 companies to offer vacuum tanker services
Keep Reading
The cruelty lies in the contradiction; while aging men are celebrated as distinguished, women are quietly erased. These attitudes ignore the fact that women’s lives hold value far beyond reproduction. Menopause should not be a sentence to invisibility but a transition into a new phase of freedom, wisdom, and self-discovery.
A woman's sexuality exists under constant surveillance, praised in youth, but only when safely contained within marriage, while any hint of desire in later years is met with scorn or mockery.
Young women walk a tightrope, branded “too provocative” for claiming ownership of their bodies, yet the same society that polices their hemlines will later deride older women as absurd or desperate for daring to express sexual agency.
Menopause magnifies this hypocrisy into a crushing silence. Women endure vaginal dryness and painful sex in isolation, their suffering compounded by the taboo against speaking openly about their bodies.
The world assumes menopause extinguishes desire, branding older women, who resist this narrative as shameless as if passion has an expiration date. Many enter this transition unprepared, armed with nothing but whispers and old wives' tales, their fear and shame multiplying in the absence of real education.
What should be a natural life phase becomes a lonely reckoning, where biology collides with society's insistence that women's worth and wants fade on schedule. The reality is that menopause affects every woman differently.
Some experience a renewed sense of sexual freedom (free from pregnancy fears), while others may struggle with physical changes. Neither experience should be a source of shame.
Society quietly demands that women fade with age to mute their colours, soften their voices, and shrink from anything deemed “unbecoming”.
This unspoken rule stems from the poisonous idea that a woman's worth diminishes along with her youth, as if vitality could only be measured in smooth skin and fertility.
An older woman daring to wear a fitted dress or red lipstick faces whispers of desperation, while her male peers receive admiration for “aging gracefully”.
In professional spaces, she is expected to be a repository of wisdom but never too ambitious, knowledgeable but never disruptive.
Even the revered status of grandmother comes with invisible chains she may be celebrated, but only within the narrow confines of domesticity, her own dreams and desires shelved as inappropriate.
This enforced retreat from visibility is not natural; it is systemic erasure. Why must a woman's right to boldness, ambition, and joy expire with each passing birthday?
True liberation means rejecting the lie that aging demands disappearance and claiming the freedom to shine at every stage of life.
The path forward demands more than awareness, it requires a fundamental reimagining of how we value women across their lifespans.
We must first break the suffocating silence around menopause, transforming hushed suffering into open dialogue in classrooms, pulpits, and airwaves, until every woman understands this transition not as failure but as natural evolution.
Healthcare spaces should become sanctuaries of understanding rather than sites of shame.
But true change asks us to go deeper to sever the patriarchal tether between womanhood and reproduction, to flood our media with images of silver-haired women running boardrooms, falling in love, scaling mountains, living full-blooded lives beyond society's expiration dates.
We need to reframe aging not as diminishment but as hard-won territory where women stand tall in their accumulated power, protected by laws that honour their humanity rather than discard their worth.
This revolution thrives through intergenerational bridges, grandmothers teaching granddaughters about cycles of change, while young women hand their elders permission to claim modern freedoms without apology.
The work is cultural, institutional, and deeply personal a collective unlearning of lies that have cramped women's lives for generations, replaced by the radical truth that a woman's value only deepens with time.
The cultural stereotypes surrounding women, menopause, and aging in Zimbabwe are not just outdated they are oppressive. They force women into boxes, deny them autonomy, and erase their voices.
My friend’s adherence to these "rules" was a reminder of how deeply ingrained these biases are. But unlearning them is possible.
By challenging stigma, amplifying women’s stories, and refusing to equate aging with irrelevance, we can create a society where every woman regardless of age can live her best life. Menopause is not the end of a woman’s story. It can be the beginning of her most liberated, fearless chapter yet.
It is time Zimbabwean culture recognised that. Until then, let us keep spreading positivity (#spreadpositivity). We were here, becoming better, making our mark, and leaving our footprint as we make the world a better place!
As we make the world a better place!
Chirenje writes in her capacity as a citizen of Zimbabwe. Follow her on social media for more Lifezone with Grace conversations on Twitter: @graceruvimbo; Facebook: Grace Ruvimbo Chirenje; Instagram: @graceruvimbo
