Beyond slogans: How government is leaving women behind in the civil service

A montage of public servants: (L), Catherine Birakwate, Christine Guwatudde and Nassali Lukwago. FILE PHOTOS

What you need to know:

  • 25 years after Uganda embarked on a constitutionally backed affirmative action policy to uplift women in society and cure historical injustices, the road to closing gender gaps in women leadership particularly in the public sector and civil service remains far from reach. .”
  • There is also gender stereotypes such as policing women’s movements especially in field trips or medium-term capacity building programmes which also obstructs women’s careers.

Politicians world over love catchphrases. There is potency in slogans, they spark imagination of the educated and ignite passion among the masses like opium. When captured in policy documents, they read even finer and when cited in speeches, they make us sound a little more intelligent.

In Uganda, especially after the 1995 Beijing world women conference and the constitution’s affirmative action ecstasy, the better position of women in our society is touted as one of the achievements the country has registered.

We produced the first female vice president in Africa, the Deputy Chief Justice was at one time a woman and a few years later the speaker of parliament is a woman.
Ugandan women like Betty Bigombe and Winnie Byanyima are ever flying our national flag across borders. In Buganda it is popularly said we live in the era of women leading, “omulembe gwa bakyala”.

President Museveni also seems to find his way into female voters’ hearts and minds and occasionally reminds them how far his government has brought them in the last three decades.

Beyond the slogans and the islands of excellence, however, a study by the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) shows, the reality on ground presents a different picture in terms of women advancement in our civil service and public sector.

So sluggish has the upward mobility of women in the civil service structures been that in some government departments and agencies, there appears to be an unwritten ceiling beyond which women cannot climb.

The numbers are quite eye popping and betray the affirmative action slogans thrown around by our politicians and the ministry of public service gender mainstreaming guidelines.
According to the Ministry, these guidelines are in line with the Uganda Gender Policy (2007) that emphasizes commitments to achieving women’s and men’s empowerment and gender equality.

In a report titled, ‘Reality Check: Women in Leadership Positions in Uganda’ FOWODE lifts the veil off affirmative action and interrogates, with data and evidence, whether women are making progress within the male dominated structures of Uganda’s civil service. The study led by Makerere University’s Dr. Josephine Ahikire flashed light into 24 ministries, six commissions, agencies and authorities, parliament, courts of judicature and three academic institutions.

In the selected government departments across the salary scales, there were 14,845 women and 40,148 men. In percentage terms women composed a paltry 27 per cent, with men at 73 per cent.
The Ministry of Public Service’s data, as of June 2018 put the overall public sector staff at 64,804, with women constituting 28 per cent, while 72 per cent were men.

The executive
Only one out of the three heads of arms of government is a woman (the speaker of parliament, Rebecca Kadaga). At the level of the deputies of heads of Executive, Judiciary, and Legislature, women representation is non-existent. Out of the topmost seven leaders in the country, only one is female.

“This image of male-centered political leadership is ingrained and normalized in leadership cultures of other public and private institutions,” the report notes.
Statistics in 2018 point to an overall increase in the total number of Permanent Secretaries. Most of these new appointments have been filled by women. Consequently, the number of female PSs increased from 26 per cent in 2018 to 40 per cent now. Uganda currently has a total of 30 permanent secretaries.

The presidency
Office of the President has 653 staff, 42 per cent of whom are female. The highest representation of women can be found at office entry level, where they take up 72 per cent of the available positions. While some of these staff are recruited centrally as public servants, “others are appointed by the President such as Resident District Commissioners and their deputies.

Both channels need to be considered when addressing gender balance in the ministry’s human resources,” reads part of the report. On the other hand, State House, “has a fair distribution of women in its ranks. Out of a total of 963 public servants, women comprise 42 per cent in relation to 58 per cent for men.

The highest numbers of women are recorded amongst Special Presidential Assistants where they constitute 83 per cent of those positions. Dr. Ahikire says, both President’s office and State House, point to higher numbers of female officers recruited at the officer-entry level, although the women begin to dwindle, as they progress towards higher positions in the hierarchy.

Office of the Prime Minister
Although the office of the Prime Minister, has a female permanent secretary and undersecretary, it still is among the government offices with the highest number of women at entry level.
At 63 per cent, OPM is amongst the MDAs with the highest number of female officers at entry-level.

Ministry of Defence and courts are doing well
Apart from having an all-male ministerial team and, “demonstrating a public image of the military as a masculine domain, defence registers a significant number of women in its leadership ranks.”

These include a female Permanent Secretary and Under Secretary in charge of Finance and Administration. Women make up 49 per cent of all staff and unlike most government offices, the ministry of defence almost had gender parity when it comes to distribution of senior positions among men and women. The Courts of Judicature record a significant representation of female staff at 49 per cet, just one percent short of gender parity. Women make up 44 per cent of the Justices of the Supreme Court and 48 per cent of the Judges of the High Court.

Local Government
At local government level, the data was captured from 117 districts and analysis of staffing composition shows that out of the 206,886 employees, women representation was considerably low at 36.6 percent.

The FOWODE report also shows that women remain marginally represented in the top leadership position. With less than 15 per cent occupying positions such as district chairpersons and their deputies, chairpersons of district service commissions, Speakers and Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) female representation at local government level is negligible.
This imbalance, FOWODE researchers say, has great implications on promoting equal opportunities at the grass-root level.

Not easy for women at Mulago Hospital
Women represent the majority of staff at Mulago National Referral Hospital with men only making up 33 per cent of the employees. Ahikire’s statistical mapping of female staff points to women dominance in what is traditionally known as care positions such as nurses and nursing assistants at 94 per cent, midwives at 90 per cent and clinical officers at 62 per cent.

“However, numbers of female staff reduced drastically in categories such as laboratory officers, consultants and those in senior managerial positions of the hospital,” the study shows.

These statistics resonate with gender stereotypes noticeable in academic institutions. For example, students’ intake in Makerere University reveals high gender gaps in the enrollment female students to science-related courses.
According to the Makerere University Fact Book 2016/17, most science courses attracted less than 40 per cent female students.

For the case of Mulago National Referral Hospital, “the predominance of women in lower positions produces and institutionalizes women as nurturers at the heart of health care provision, whether for the household members or as a state duty,” the study argues, adding, “Beyond women’s low placement in formal health care provision, this trend points to the politics of unpaid care work in the domestic sphere – where women are expected to provide care to the sick, children and elderly in homes.

These social expectations and stereotypes leave women in dependency and inhibit their progress to positions that enable them to participate in decision making to transform their lives and of those around them.”

Makerere University
FOWODE’s report notes that at Makerere University all the governance structures are male-dominated. “The male-centered institutional culture is explicitly demonstrated by an all-male Makerere University Academic Staff Association Executive Committee.”

Overall, there is a 20 per cent representation of women in the University’s governance structures where strategic decisions are framed and promoted.
“Male domination in top leadership structures can be traced far back in history since the university has never had a female Chancellor or Vice Chancellor,” notes the report.

Despite slight improvements in the composition of women in some individual ministries, the researchers argue that human resource managers in the public sector did not deliberately attempt to recruit female staff. to bridge the gender gaps in human resources.

According to the Ministry of Public Service’s response there are no specific gender considerations at entry-level. The Ministry of Public Service recruits on merit and gives equal opportunity to all Ugandans to compete for the available positions whenever available.”
Consequently, Allan Muhereza, the commissioner says that gender is not a priority at recruitment and promotion level.

Government promotes merit and aims to give opportunity to all Ugandans who qualify. The exception to this rule is when men and women scored similar points in the interview process. But this is rule is not ironclad as other factors like regional balance and marginalized groups like persons with disability are also considered under this arrangement.

Ahikire says merit, upon which government bases staff recruitment and promotion is itself gendered. Due to gender norms and stereotypes, women and men find themselves taking different academic professions, given different levels of exposure and room for creativity.

“These differences are widened by men’s and women’s experiences in their reproductive age, marriage, childbearing, and nurturing in the domestic sphere. These contribute to one’s availability and mobility at the workplace and the readiness to take on new assignments,” she says.

In conversations with human resource managers of the different government offices, it emerged that the reduction of female staff towards middle and top managerial positions is attributed to gender-specific constraints that women face in their career path.

These, Ahikire writes, include the fact that, “the majority of the female staff are in their reproductive age, their career prospects are constrained by specific roles such as pregnancy, giving birth and nurturing children.”

There is also gender stereotypes such as policing women’s movements especially in field trips or medium-term capacity building programmes which also obstructs women’s careers.

In our interview conversations, officials noted that more female than male staff may pull out of the training programmes outside the country for fear of being accused of ‘sexual pervasion’ with other men. Yet training and capacity building programmes are key to knowledge exposure, skills acquisition, and mentorship into career progress,” the researchers noted.

If the numbers are anything to go by, it clearly is not yet Uhuru for Uganda’s affirmative action efforts.