Forging Their Path: Embodied Agency Among Adolescent Girls in Zvishavane’s Mining District, Zimbabwe

Adolescent girls’ agency is vital for achieving positive educational, health, and socio-economic outcomes, yet it is constrained by intersecting social, cultural, and structural factors. This study examines how adolescent girls in Zvishavane, a mining district in Zimbabwe, embody agency to navigate everyday challenges. Guided by feminist research approaches, this participatory study amplifies girls’ voices and lived experiences. Using a qualitative design, data were collected from 29 girls aged 10–19. Sixteen girls participated in individual interviews, while 13 took part in two age-banded focus group discussions for girls aged 10–14 and 15–19; the same 13 girls completed community mapping exercises. Six key stakeholders, including political, educational, religious, and health leaders, were interviewed separately to provide contextual and comparative insights. Thematic analysis identified key dimensions of agency, including personal attributes, skills, knowledge, access to resources, and embodied experiences. The findings revealed that girls exercise agency through self-discipline, moral reasoning, critical thinking, financial independence, relational negotiation, and bodily autonomy. Despite pervasive poverty, gender-based violence, and restrictive norms, girls navigate risks through resilience, strategic decision-making, and engagement with supportive networks. Agency is informed by cultural values such as Ubuntu and relational responsibilities. Overall, this study demonstrates that adolescent girls in marginalised mining communities are capable of forging pathways towards self-determination and empowerment and that supporting embodied agency is critical to enabling their long-term well-being and societal participation. This study contributes to an understanding of adolescent agency as embodied, relational, and context-specific. The implications include integrating culturally grounded ethics into empowerment programmes, expanding entrepreneurship and digital literacy initiatives, institutionalising mentorship and psychosocial support, and creating safe spaces for girls’ voices. Intersectional and comparative studies of adolescent agency, as well as longitudinal studies tracking how agency develops over time, could deepen understanding of embodied agency and provide evidence for more effective, contextually informed policies and programmes.