Introduction
ActionAid Zambia (AAZ) is part of the ActionAid Federation, a global movement working towards social justice, gender equality, and poverty eradication. Our vision is of a just, equitable, and sustainable Zambia where every person enjoys freedom from poverty and oppression, living in dignity.
Guided by our 2023–2028 Country Strategy Paper, we prioritize civic participation, feminist alternatives, and economic justice. Within this framework, ActionAid Zambia seeks to interrogate the inherent neoliberal, patriarchal, and capitalist underpinnings of Zambia’s tax system and critically examine the ways in which it reflects and reinforces gender injustice. This will also include reimagining alternatives that serve the people, particularly those already structurally marginalized
Background
Taxation is one of the most powerful tools available to governments to mobilize domestic resources and redistribute wealth. However, taxation is not gender neutral. The structure of tax systems often reflects deep-seated inequalities in society, reinforcing patterns of disadvantage rooted in neoliberal, patriarchal, and capitalist systems, perpetuating economic exclusion and gendered oppression rather than addressing them. In Zambia, as other countries in the global south, the tax regime relies heavily on indirect taxes such as Value Added Tax and excise duties, which disproportionately burden low-income households, where women are overrepresented. At the same time, fiscal incentives and corporate tax breaks are deigned to benefit wealthier groups and foreign investors, thereby reducing the fiscal space available for investment in gender-responsive public services.[1] This underscores the need for a feminist analysis that reveals how the tax system entrenches gendered and economic injustice and identifies transformative pathways for change.
Women in Zambia shoulder the majority of unpaid care and domestic work, a burden that is often intensified when public services are underfunded or cut back under austerity measures. ActionAid’s global report The Care Contradiction has shown how fiscal consolidation and restrictive macroeconomic frameworks promoted by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are gender exploitative as they limit social spending and place additional burden on women’s time and labour. In the Zambian context, limited investments in health, education, and social protection amplify the demands on women’s unpaid work, while regressive tax measures continue to extract a higher relative contribution from those least able to pay.
Furthermore, Zambia is grappling with a constrained fiscal environment due to high levels of public debt and reliance on external financing arrangements. The pursuit of debt sustainability has often translated into austerity reforms that prioritize fiscal consolidation over investment in gender transformative public service delivery. This macroeconomic framework has profound gendered implications, yet these are rarely acknowledged in tax policy design. Women, especially those in the informal economy, face intersecting layers of exclusion: they are underrepresented in tax policy decision-making, their work is systematically undervalued and excluded from economic measurements, and their lived realities are largely overlooked in fiscal reforms
This study is situated within a broader effort to challenge the prevailing view of taxation as a purely technical exercise and instead to expose its inherently political, gendered, and structural nature. By uncovering the policy landscape of taxation in Zambia, identifying existing gaps, and proposing transformative alternatives, the research will contribute to advocacy for a fairer and more equitable tax system that recognizes women’s rights and advances gender justice. The study will also highlight how Zambia can move away from regressive and extractive models of taxation towards progressive and redistributive approaches that expand fiscal space for gender-transformative public services and address systemic inequalities across society.
General objective
To critically interrogate Zambia’s tax policy framework through a feminist lens, examining how it is shaped by neoliberal, patriarchal, and capitalist systems, uncovering structural gendered injustices, identifying policy gaps, and proposing transformative alternatives for a gender-just and equitable tax system
Specific Objectives
1. Map the gendered and structural policy landscape of Zambia’s tax system, identifying how it is shaped by neoliberal, patriarchal, and capitalist ideologies, and highlighting implicit and explicit gender biases.
2. Analyse the gendered impacts of taxation, assessing how direct and indirect taxes affect women, men, and other structurally marginalized groups differently, including the intersections of class and informal status.
3. Examine the gendered implications of fiscal consolidation and austerity, including their interaction with women’s unpaid care and domestic work, and their role in reinforcing or dismantling structural inequalities.
4. Identify systemic gaps and biases in existing tax policy that undermine gender justice and perpetuate economic exclusion.
5. Propose progressive, feminist, and gender-transformative tax policy alternatives, grounded in a structural analysis, that expand fiscal space for gender-transformative public services and advance economic justice.
Process
The Consultant will apply feminist and decolonial research principles throughout the study, ensuring that the process is participatory, inclusive, and attentive to power dynamics. This includes actively centring the voices, experiences, and knowledge of women and other structurally marginalised groups, recognising that knowledge exists in multiple forms, including lived experience, oral herstories, community narratives, and other non-traditional or informal knowledge systems, and challenging dominant assumptions about who is considered a ‘knower’.
Engage relevant stakeholders including government actors, women’s rights organisations, feminist groups, and structurally marginalised communities to collect qualitative and quantitative data necessary to meet the specific objectives, in line with the timelines provided. Engagement should prioritise participatory approaches that recognise and validate diverse forms of knowledge, ensuring the perspectives of those most impacted by taxation are central to the analysis.
Draw on diverse sources of evidence, including qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, participatory mapping, case studies) , lived experience and existing feminist analyses, to ensure the absence of formal sex-disaggregated data does not prevent a robust feminist analysis.
The Consultant will prepare draft reports for review, sharing them with the Policy and Programmes Manager (PPM), ActionAid Zambia team, and relevant partners. This stage will enable iterative feedback to ensure the analysis remains rigorous and grounded in feminist principles. The Consultant will address all comments and inputs from ActionAid and partners, ensuring the final report reflects collective review and validation. The consolidated final report will be submitted to ActionAid Zambia, including clear recommendations for advocacy and reform.
Methodology
The consultant will employ a mix of desk review, policy analysis, and stakeholder consultations, ensuring participatory and feminist research approaches. This includes:
Desk Review and Policy Analysis
Review national tax policies, revenue frameworks, budgets, and relevant legislation to assess how they are shaped by neoliberal, patriarchal, and capitalist ideologies.
Identify the gendered dimensions of these policies, including implicit and explicit biases, and gaps in addressing gender justice.
Examine the alignment of tax policy with national commitments to gender equality, human rights, and economic justice.
Analyse relevant international frameworks and feminist critiques of taxation for comparative perspectives.
Gender-Disaggregated Tax Incidence Analysis
Analyse the distributional impacts of taxation across gender, class, and other intersecting classifications.
Link quantitative and qualitative findings to lived experiences, particularly of those most affected by regressive taxes and austerity measures.
Identify how taxation interacts with unpaid care work, informal labour, and systemic inequalities.
Stakeholder Engagement
Conduct key informant interviews and focus group discussions with diverse stakeholders, including women’s rights organisations, feminist groups, civil society, policymakers, revenue authorities, and structurally marginalised communities.
Ensure that engagement methods are participatory and accessible, recognising diverse forms of knowledge (oral histories, lived experience) and actively addressing power imbalances in the research process.
the research process.
Participatory Validation and Feedback
Organise a validation workshop with stakeholders to review preliminary findings, ensuring transparency and collective ownership of the analysis.
Incorporate feedback into the final analysis and recommendations.
Feminist Analysis Guidance
The consultant’s approach should explicitly interrogate:
· How tax policy reflects and reinforces gendered power relations, patriarchy, and economic inequality.
· Who benefits and who is excluded from current tax systems.
· How taxation interacts with broader social and economic structures, including care work, labour markets, and social protection systems.
· Alternative models of taxation that advance gender justice, redistribute wealth, and expand fiscal space for gender-responsive public services.
Deliverables
· Inception Report (methodology, tools, and workplan).
· Draft Report presenting preliminary findings, gender analysis, and emerging recommendations.
· Validation Workshop Facilitation with stakeholders.
· Final Report (30–40 pages) detailing the gendered tax landscape, policy gaps, and transformative recommendations.
· Policy Brief (5–7 pages) summarizing key findings and advocacy messages.
Time schedule
The consultancy will be conducted over a period of twenty-five (25) working days inclusive of validation of draft reports and submission of final report. Therefore, the Consultancy period will take place from 2nd March February 2026 to 3rd April 2026. The final report must be submitted by the Consultant no later than Monday, 6th April 2026
Bid Submission
Prospective consultants should submit the following:
- Not more than three (3) pages technical proposal highlighting how they intend to undertake the required deliverables – inclusive of timelines.
- Not more than three (3) pages of a detailed financial proposal.
- A CV outlining demonstratable experience in carrying out similar work and traceable references.
Qualifications and Competencies
The consultant should have the following qualifications:
a) Advanced degree in economics, public finance, gender studies, development studies, or related social sciences.
b) Demonstrated expertise in tax policy analysis, gender-responsive public finance, and feminist economics.
c) Strong knowledge of Zambia’s fiscal policy environment.
d) Proven experience conducting participatory research (applying feminist research principles) and producing high-quality publications.
e) Strong facilitation skills for validation workshops.
f) Demonstrated ability to prepare timely and high-quality reports.
Applications must be submitted to info.zambia@actionaid.org with the subject line: Consultancy Application – Gender and Tax Study. Deadline for submission is 27th February 2026 at 5:00 PM Zambian Time (CAT).
