Little action has been taken to help women succeed

Ms Theopista Nakito feeds her chicken. According to the Gender Policy Brief for Uganda’s Agriculture sector, women accounted for 55 per cent of the workforce in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector in 2009/10. File photo

What you need to know:

Many laws have been passed and policies put in place to ensure women are educated, given political posts and employed fairly. But the statistics show that the legislation has remained on paper.

Joyce has always been hard working. She is a skilled farmer whom many women in her village look up to. She is such an exemplary person that when her father died a few years ago, he left Joyce the house and two acres of prime farmland.

Joyce was honoured by her father’s dying wishes, particularly in a culture where women are often excluded from land ownership. As a single mother, life was not easy for her but she used the land wisely to tend coffee and matooke and raise pigs and goats. She was by no means wealthy, but she was able to feed her children and send them to school.

This state of affairs however quickly changed when Joyce’s step-brother arrived at her door-step and demanded that she leaves. He told her, as a woman she was not entitled to inheriting anything from their father.

The situation became unbearable and after two years of haggling, Joyce left the property. She was left homeless and after some years totally gave up on the project. It was only after one of the pastors in her church took her to a legal seminar that life changed for Joyce.

At the seminar which was conducted by International Justice Mission, Joyce was assigned a lawyer who helped her repossess the inherited property.

She also started a chicken project that has enabled her to take her children back to school and fend for her family. Now Joyce shares her story with the hope that others will be motivated through her experience. Hers is one of the few success stories that show the deep need for cultural change about gender perceptions.
No doubt, the government and various stakeholders have taken several strides to ensure that women at all levels are empowered. Progress towards ending harmful practices such as sexual and gender-based violence are being made with efforts such as the Domestic Violence Act, Female Genital Mutilation Act, and the draft Marriage and Divorce Bill in place.

There have also been strides to increase women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services, for example the free medical care at Reproductive Health Uganda which has 768 service points countrywide.

Institutions, such as Foundation for Sustainable Development support local programmes, and initiatives that empower women by providing counselling and other social services for women and families affected by HIV, exist.

Uganda Women’s Efforts to Save Orphans is another success story. It started out as a project by mothers committed to providing relief aid to needy children left parentless by the civil turbulence of the early mid-1980s, and the HIV/Aids pandemic and over the years, it has offered employment opportunities for hundreds of women.

Women’s education has been boosted by ensuring universal access to primary and secondary school education.

In 2010, for the first time, there were more girls than boys enrolled in primary schools. According to a report released by Ministry of Education and Sports for the year 2010, more than eight million students were enrolled in primary schools, of which 51 per cent were females and 49 per cent males. This shows a tremendous improvement. The ratio of boys to girls in primary schools has improved from 55:45 in 1986 to 52:48 in 2000 to 49:51 in 2010.

In the corridors of power, the share of women in Parliament increased from 18 per cent in 2000 to 35 per cent in 2012, rising well above the international average (20 per cent). This progress is largely attributed to a quota system where each district elects one woman representative – 112 of the current 130 women MPs were elected in this manner.

In 2011, Rebecca Kadaga became the first female to be elected Speaker of the Parliament. In the current cabinet, women hold more than a third of senior ministerial portfolios, including finance and education. So there is something to celebrate, but the Uganda Demographic Health Survey (UDHS 2011) indicates that challenges still remain as shown below.

Education – positive trend has slowed
In the early 2000s, it appeared that Uganda was on course to achieve gender parity at all levels of education by 2015. This was boosted by favourable policies in the admission procedures of public universities. But this seems to be in the distant past because lately, the positive trend at the secondary and tertiary levels has slowed.

According to statistics from Ministry of Education, as of 2012 there were still only 85 and 79 girls for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary and tertiary education respectively.

Also, greater gender equality in the education system has been slow to translate into the economic and social spheres.

Labour – women still receive less

It was observed that on average, women work seven hours a week less than men in economic activities (working for pay or profit, or contributing to a family business or farm), but significantly more in domestic chores (the collection of firewood and fetching of water, milling and other food processing for own consumption).

Women are even more likely than men to work in low value-added primary activities. According to the Gender Policy Brief for Uganda’s Agriculture Sector, women accounted for 55 per cent of the workforce in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector in 2009/10. The report adds, of the women working outside of the agricultural sector, 62 per cent were employed in the informal sector compared to 55 per cent of men.

According to Richard Ssebagala, a lecturer at Ndejje University and author of a research paper, ‘Wage Determination and Gender Discrimination in Uganda’, “Gender analysis shows that women are disadvantaged in the labor market. They are occupationally and industrially segmented.

If the difference in economic outcomes in the labor market for female workers is attributed to discrimination, rather than to differences in human capital endowments, this mechanism has potential to limit the human and economic development of millions of people.

Therefore, searching for the reasons of the gender wage gap has important social and economic worth. At first, it would provide the paths for women to get equivalent earning as men, and so as to help realize gender equality.”

A recent study concluded that while women face elements of gender-based discrimination, the most important obstacles affecting women in the labour market are structural in nature, and that transformation of the economy – particularly shifting labour out of agriculture into non-farm activities – will help to significantly reduce gender-based inequalities.

The rapid growth of non-agricultural wage employment over recent years – though from a low base – is benefiting women as well as men. Although women account for only around one third of non-agricultural paid employees, this proportion is gradually increasing.

Domestic violence has worsened
As regards domestic violence, statistically, we have not achieved much; the UDHS 2011 shows domestic violence standing at 56 per cent, just a four per cent drop from 60 per cent in 2006. In 2013, Uganda Police crime report showed that domestic violence and defilement were the highest crimes in the country.

According to the Annual Crime and Traffic Road Safety Report 2013, 3,426 cases of domestic violence where registered while defilement accounted for 9,598 cases. “I note that sex-related crimes, in particular defilement, are not decreasing with 9,589 cases compared to 8,076 cases in 2012.

Domestic violence also increased by 18.4 per cent from 2,793 cases reported in 2012 to 3,426 cases reported in 2013,” Gen Kale Kayihura, Inspector General of Police said. And yet domestic violence is the least reported crime due to the attitudes and acceptance of violence.

Uganda has passed several laws in response to gender based violence including the Domestic Violence Act 2010, Female Genital Mutilation Act 2010 and Trafficking in Persons Act 2010. However, the government has not yet prioritised the implementation of these laws except for FGM Act in the selected districts. To date, Uganda has no public shelters for survivors. Existing ones are run by CSOs and funded by donors.

What needs to be done?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on their website states that the attainment of MDG 3 will require a comprehensive approach to overcome not only violence against women, but also gender-based discrimination in laws and policies, and deeply-embedded social and cultural norms that perpetuate gender inequality.

It goes on to state that efforts to empower women must address current norms and traditional social customs that legitimise violence against them, as well as legislation and law enforcement that discriminate against them.

“Initiatives to promote gender equality must deal openly and vigorously with the issue of partner violence, because women will never be equal in their public lives until they are equal at home,” the WHO website states.

In addition to that, Cedovip urges government to ensure that statistics on violence against women, including on prosecution and conviction rates, are regularly collected and disseminated, and that interventions to address violence are properly evaluated.

Jackie Asiimwe-Mwesige, the coordinator of Uganda Women’s Network believes there is no need to add additional targets but rather a call for all stakeholders to get serious and stop talking the talk and walk the talk.

“Uganda ticks the boxes in terms of legal framework, however, the challenge remains with some of the attitudes of the people around women,” she says, adding that “such attitudes do not allow gender equality to flourish.”
The government is well aware of these setbacks.

However, while the targets and indicators under MDG 3 recognise that education, literacy, wage employment and political participation are important indices of women’s empowerment, their achievement – in and of themselves – does not directly address violence against women.

This gap caused the Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality to recommend that other country-level targets and indicators be included for this MDG. Key among these was the suggestion that the lifetime prevalence of violence against women be reduced by 50 per cent by 2015.

With 2015 being a few months away, the country is far from achieving this as stated in a report titled ‘Economic Costs of Domestic Violence in Uganda’, which indicates that despite the presence of some legislation relating to domestic violence, a major challenge remains regarding the ineffective implementation of the laws.

Threats by relatives did not scare one woman away

When her husband died in 2008, Harriet (pictured below) and her eight children endured years of abuse from relatives who wanted to steal her home and land. Before they could even lay his remains to rest, her husband’s relatives demanded that Harriet vacate their home and leave her children and property to them, but she bravely refused. She says, “If I left my children with my husband’s family, they would be turned into street kids.”
Realising that she was no pushover, the relatives decided to cut their food supply by stealing or cutting down the crops Harriet grew to feed her family. Her brother-in-law moved into a house next to hers, where he would repeatedly harass and verbally abuse her.

For five years, Harriet’s oldest daughter, Sarah, watched as her mother was subjected to these threats, insults and humiliation. The local leaders and police had failed to permanently resolve this situation. Sarah feared that one day her father’s relatives would kill her mother.
The threats reached a terrifying peak in May 2013. Two of Sarah’s cousins stormed the home late in the night and violently hit the walls —causing bricks to fall in on Harriet’s family inside. They screamed threats and demanded that Harriet abandon the home. One of the cousins threatened to kill Harriet and bury her where no one would find her.
Fearing for her family’s safety, Sarah confided in her church leaders, who referred her to International Justice Mission (IJM) for the help they needed.

IJM investigators worked with local police to obtain evidence of the terrifying violence. On August 12, 2013, the two cousins who had attacked the home and threatened Harriet were arrested.

Several days after the abusive relatives were arrested, IJM and local council leaders met with Harriet’s extended family to affirm the widow’s rights and clearly mark out her land. They discovered that Harriet had rights to even more land than she knew. This empowered Harriet to use the available resources to support herself and her children.

As for the two violent relatives, they were arraigned in court on September 23, 2013, and Harriet bravely testified against them. Her tormentors finally admitted their crimes and asked her forgiveness.

At times, remorse can satisfy court, but not in this case. The judge found the relatives guilty, and ordered them to pay Harriet for the crops they destroyed and laid out serious prison sentences if they ever harassed her again. They were eventually sentenced to a fine and community service.

Convicting these relatives in spite of their confession represents a promising change for local courts in the fight against property grabbing.

For Harriet, these convictions signify an end to the years of abuse and fear she endured. Now she knows her children are safe, and she has been empowered to know that no one should rob her of a safe and secure home.