Thirty years.
That’s how long it’s been since the world first gathered in Beijing and rewrote what gender equality sounded like. In Zimbabwe, the phrase “takapihwa marights kuBeijing” slipped easily into village talk. It meant as a woman you could now demand fair treatment at home, at work, in politics. And of course it came with its share of jokes that would have made some outstanding social media memes, if the digital age had been upon us then. Beijing 1995 became both a conference and a cultural shift.

Fast-forward to October 2025, and the world once again meets in Beijing to take stock. Same city, same mission — but the world outside couldn’t be more different.

Some Rights Became Routine

Let’s give ourselves credit where it’s due.
Zimbabwe has quietly done better than many loud democracies when it comes to the nuts and bolts. Equal pay for equal work  practically came with Independence, is enshrined in the2013 Constitution and enforceable by law — something the United States, that self-appointed global gender referee, only put on paper during Obama’s tenure and the jury is still out on whether it’s a reality on the ground . Paid maternity leave is guaranteed. Girls’ enrolment in basic education now matches boys’ almost one-for-one. In some provinces, girls even outperform boys in national exams.

We’ve normalized what other countries are still debating. That’s worth celebrating.

The Boys We Are Leaving Behind

There’s an uncomfortable subplot in this story.
As we rushed to keep girls in school — and rightly so — but we are ignoring the boys slipping through the cracks. Current stats show dropout rates are now almost identical. Yet almost every NGO poster still shouts, “Keep the Girl Child in School.”

Who’s looking out for the boy child? Because the same disempowered boy becomes the man drowning in drug abuse or social media rage, railing at “lost masculinity” instead of finding purpose. And the empowered girl will have to deal with him as a brother, partner, uncle, friend and all other social dynamics out there.

Real gender progress must be equitable, not adversarial. Uplifting girls should never mean abandoning boys.

Politics: The Last Glass Ceiling Standing

Our biggest unfinished business is politics. Rwanda and Namibia didn’t just talk about representation; they rewired their systems. Rwanda’s parliament is still over 60 percent women. Namibia hovers around 40 percent. Zimbabwe? Barely 28 percent.

Not because we lack capable women, but because our political pipeline leaks: party structures dominated by old-boys’ networks, campaign spaces unsafe, and no childcare for candidates juggling motherhood. Quotas help, but they’re a plaster on a structural wound.

We need a complete rethink — funding, safety, mentoring, and electoral design that turns representation into power.

Where the Narrative Went Sideways

Somewhere after Beijing ’95, China — the summit’s host and once the symbol of coordinated progress — faded from Africa’s gender conversation. Western NGOs with generous budgets took the driver’s seat, often shaping what “empowerment” should look like. The result? Talk-show activism, PowerPoint gender, endless panels — and too few measurable results.

Meanwhile, China quietly kept its women in science, leadership, and local governance programs growing. The contrast should make us pause: sometimes the loudest champions are not the most effective ones.

Instead of forever benchmarking against Western nations that barely elect women, we can learn from our neighbors. Rwanda built gender parity through quotas, data, and deliberate grooming of young female leaders. Namibia normalized women in cabinet, not as tokens but as decision-makers.

Their lesson? System beats sentiment. When equality is engineered into institutions, it becomes normal.

30 Years Later: What Now?

Thirty years between Beijings is more than a timeline — it’s a mirror.
We’ve moved from shouting for rights to negotiating for specific pieces of the cake. From “marights” to “results.”

But the next frontier isn’t just for women. It’s for societies wise enough to know that gender equity is national stability. It’s for leaders who understand that you can’t fix the future by empowering half of it.

The next time someone says, “women rights”, may it no longer sound like an adversarial attack on men — but an ongoing project to make the world a better place for all.