Dr Kabonesa grooming a gender sensitive generation

Associate Professor Consolata Kabonesa is a name to reckon within academia and also in advocating for gender equality in universities, local communities countrywide and beyond.
For more than 25 years, Dr Kabonesa has used specialised experience in promoting women and gender issues, teaching, community engagement, gender training and research. Her dedicated efforts won her awards from President Museveni during the 2016 Women’s Day celebrations and the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
The soft spoken professor who lectures at Makerere University in the School of Women and Gender Studies (SWGS), is a mother, humanitarian, Rotarian, farmer and a devout Catholic. She is married to Prof. Frederick W. Jjuuko of the School of Law at Makerere University.

Family and education background
Born to the late Peter Bamuhiga and Rose Kazigati of Mugusu, Kabarole District, Dr Kabonesa is the last born and the only girl in a family of five although three of her brothers passed away. Dr Kabonesa says attending school was a struggle because her father passed on, when she was only two weeks old leaving her mother who did not have any income to look after the young family.
“My brother had to sacrifice his government bursary in my favour when I was in Primary Four, which saw me through primary level and him dropping out. When I finished Primary Seven, I still did not have fees, so I went to Bishop Magambo Abwooli, an auxiliary bishop at Fort Portal Diocese, I told him I had been accepted to St Maria Goretti but I did not have school fees. He offered to pay my fees but for one term because the main bishop had put paying fees for orphans and needy children on hold,” she recounts.
Thereafter the Holy Cross Sisters paid her tuition until she completed Senior Four. At that time, all the students who were on bursaries used to work in the library cleaning and arranging books as a way of paying back. She later joined Tororo Girls Secondary School for her A-Level.
“After my A-Level, I joined Stonehill College in Massachusettes USA in 1980 and spent one semester on an exchange programme Scholarship and later got a scholarship to study at University College Dublin, Ireland,” she reveals.
It was until she sought to study her masters in Northern Carolina, USA that she learnt about a scholarship offer from University College. She went back to Ireland for her Masters.
“When I finished my Masters, I still went ahead to do a post graduate diploma in education because I was really interested in coming back to Uganda to teach. This had been my dream career. I completed in 1987 and of course the war in Uganda was over, so I came back.”

Back to Uganda
Upon her return, she went back to teach at St Maria Goretti SS where she taught before leaving for the US for her undergraduate studies.
“Bishop Magambo gave me a ticket to the US and asked me to offer teaching services to St Maria Goretti when I returned. But my heart was not contented, I wanted to join Makerere University,” she shares.
Later, Dr Kabonesa applied for a job at Makerere University and in 1988 she was appointed Deputy University Secretary, a role she did not take on because her passion was in teaching. She eventually got a job at the US Embassy to work as a cultural and educational specialist.
“I was in charge of exchange programmes, tours, short visits, cultural and educational exhibitions,” she says.

Becoming gender sensitive
Dr Kabonesa’s gender sensitivity was triggered by her experience while working at the US embassy in Uganda.
“While at the embassy, I realised there were few qualified women for the programmes I was in charge of. I kept on wondering why? Where are the women? Only to realize that women faced a lot of barriers ranging from individual to socio-cultural. I then decided to go back to university to study gender studies and come back to teach at Makerere University,” she says.
Because the University of Illinois did not have a gender programme, Dr Kabonesa opted to do human resource and family studies for masters degree and human and community development for her PhD. At both levels (Ms and PhD) with a minor in gender relations in international development.

Gender sensitivity progress
Dr Kabonesa says the last 27 years of advocating for gender equality have been exciting and revealing.
“Although gender activists, practitioners and academicians have tried to address gender inequalities in society and particularly to empower women, the changes are barely visible. However, for some individual women; they are doing well, things are happening but if you analyse women countrywide, the majority are still poor with limited access to productive resources, family planning services and generally marginalised. Addressing gender requires changing people’s attitudes, and their perceptions they have acquired over the years and changing them is not easy,” she states.
She notes that right now, there are many individual experts and NGOs whose work focuses on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Universities globally have established units which teach women studies and gender studies and address concerns of women, which she says is a sign that things are getting better.
“Change in the right direction requires concerted efforts of many different players including the government, development partners, academic institutions, the media, civil society organisations, individual experts and interested parties in areas related to gender equality and women’s empowerment,” Dr Kabonesa notes.

Gender pressing issues
Much remains to change nevertheless.
“For example survivors of Gender Based Violence (GBV) and sexual harassment do not disclose perpetrators or do not want to report them because they fear retaliation and victimisation from the perpetrators and the general stigma from society,” Dr Kabonesa points out.
She observes a glaring lack of infrastructure to handle this vice and help the victims most of who are students from schools/ universities and employees in formal work places.

Life at Makerere
Dr Kabonesa started working at Makerere in July, 1999 as a lecturer in School of Women and Gender Studies.
“I taught and coordinated the master’s programme which saw me learning this university system very fast,” she shares. She rose rise through the ranks from lecturer, senior lecturer to associate professor.
With time, Dr Kabonesa was co-opted on a gender mainstreaming committee and she started serving on a number of committees for the Faculty of Social Sciences and the university at large.
Having got a chance to be on the committee investigating sexual harassment at the university, Dr Kabonesa says they are implementing some structures that will help the university curb the vice.
“Yes I know it will take a long time but the university is working hard on it and hopefully, there will be attitude change because that is what it is all about. Having attitude change towards women is important, we should appreciate and value our women and stop seeing them as skirts going by; If we create an environment that is favourable to women and the girls child to exercise their rights, then we can say we are heading somewhere,” she explains.

Gender for youth and women
Through her engagements, she organises gender dialogues for students to discuss gender issues, women empowerment and constraints facing the girl child.
The dialogues propose ways of addressing different concerns of women, men, the youth and boys and girls.
“We organise specific dialogue programmes for them, these at times have something to do with issues surrounding masculinities and male involvement in the gender agenda. The aim of the dialogues is for the students to learn and share how to address problems we encounter on a daily basis,” she says.
“We have organised a gender identity week for two years. We organise the week’s activities with the youth because we want to be involved at all levels.”
The gender identity week is organised in partnership with the Embassy of Sweden. Under this project we had scholarships, five post-doctoral candidates; eight PhDs; 12 masters and research focusing on different gender related topics,” she shares.
Dr Kabonesa championed the teaching and embracing of ICT in the School of Women and Gender Studies - teaching CISCO, and related ICT programmes in 2002.

Gaps in women empowerment
According to Kabonesa, the gaps in female empowerment are still many because the majority lack economic skills and girls face social and cultural constraints.
“There is a gap in resources; women still lack economic/productive resources to realise their life’s expectation. They want to participate in trade, agricultural production they need capital, yet it is difficult for them to access/credit/loans because they lack collateral. If women are poor so will their children be,” she shares.
Talking about women’s capacity to deliver, Kabonesa says unless they have these resources, they cannot deliver.
“Women also lack information and this comes about because of their literacy level, if they cannot read and interpret English they cannot do much since most of the programmes and communication is in English.”
“The issue of attitude towards women is also pressing. Although there are more women who are educated and employed than 50 years ago, attitude about women has not changed very much, we are still looked at as people incapable of reasoning/critical thinking, who belong to the kitchen,” she explains.
She adds that violence against women in different forms is also still eminent and should be handled at different fora.

Successes
She was head of the Department of Women and Gender Studies for three years; and dean of the School of Women and Gender Studies for four years. “In recognition of my service, the President gave me a medal on Women’s Day in 2016 after the Ministry of Gender appreciated that I have contributed in the struggle of gender as an educationist and an activist,” she shares.
Dr Kabonesa has been privileged to serve on more than ten committees of different causes at Makerere University and many gender committees and organisations such as Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development; Ministry of Finance. Planning and Economic Development; National Council for Higher Education. She was President of the National Association of Uganda Women Organisations; chairperson ActionAid Uganda; and chairperson of Kabarole Research and Resource centre among others.