Is the struggle for gender equality an elusive dream?

This year, Uganda joins the rest of the World to celebrate the International Women’s Day on a theme that focuses on the future of women and gender equality. Irene Abalo Otto had a conversation with Patricia Munabi Babiha, to unpack the realities of sustainability and equality in the Ugandan context. Munabi is the executive director of Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) - a women’s rights organisation that has made efforts in bridging the gender gap for 27 years.

Irene Abalo

The theme for this year’s international Women’s Day is, “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.” How relevant is this theme in terms of its relevance to the ordinary Ugandan?

When we talk about gender equality, we are talking about women and men, girls and boys having equality of opportunities. This entails looking at who the disadvantaged gender is and putting in place mechanisms to ensure that the gaps that have been identified through the work that has been done can be addressed. It is about looking for imbalances and bridging the gaps to ensure that there is balance. When we are talking about gender equality in our context, we are looking at the place of the woman and the man. When we talk about women’s place for example in education; where is the girl? Where is the boy? Where is the young male and where is the young female and where is the youthful female and male? When we talk about services such as health, and know that many women use these services because their gender roles. How are health services facilitating the woman and the man to ensure that when the women go to the hospital, the facilities are available for them? We keep saying poverty has a woman’s face because women are usually the poorest or because they are illiterate and their education has not allowed them to go to a certain level to earn an income. If they are in the economy, they are in the informal economy and, therefore, their income is much less than that of the man. When you think of poverty, where is the woman? And what needs to be done in order to get her to a better place?

UN Women argues that without gender equality today, a sustainable future and an equal future remains beyond our reach. To what extent has Uganda closed the gender gap to forge a sustainable future?

Progress has been made but a lot more needs to be done. In education for example, we have 50/50 percent enrolment of both girls and boys in primary school but by the time you get to Primary Seven, the numbers of the girls have dropped drastically. Why? Girls are seen as property and in a poverty-striken environment, the parents will most likely tell the girl to stay at home and get married and they get a bit of bride price. This is an issue that needs urgent attention. How do we ensure that girls remain in school? Once a girl remains in school, it has a ripple effect. They make better choices. They are less likely to have many children they cannot look after. They are more likely to make more money because they then enter into the formal sector.

Uganda has one of the youngest populations but most of our young people are unemployed. So how do you expect sustainability in terms of the resources that these young people are able to generate when most of them are unemployed? This then has a ripple effect on poverty among the young people. We have done very well on the numbers of women in decision-making. We are above the critical mass of 30 percent, we are slowly heading towards the 50/50 gender parity. But these numbers need to translate into a transformation of the lives of women and men and also effectively dealing with some of the issues of service delivery such as education, health and so on.

When we talk about sustainable future, someone would ask, ‘sustainable’ for who, whose future? Can you expound on this narrative of building a sustainable future?

It is sustainability for everyone. The well-being of an individual and the environment they live in. All of us want to live in an environment where we are all equal, with equal opportunities and fairness in the way things are distributed among the populace.

What challenges continue to stand in the way for gender equality from your two-decade experience in this space?

Our core area of work is on women leadership. Everything we do revolves around getting women to be effective leaders and aligning laws, policies and budgets to address issues of women. We have seen women get into the leadership spaces as a result of capacity enhancement and also win vital laws for women. Since 1995, we have seen many laws passed by Parliament that are progressive in addressing issues that affect women. For example, to Domestic Violence Act, Anti FGM Act, Sexual Offenses Bill that has since bounced back to Parliament, Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, among others. We have seen a number of positive laws that have come through but we are saying, beyond having these laws and policies on paper, we need them to be implemented so that they can have an impact on the women. That is something that we need to continue to work on going forward. We know that some of these issues are affected by context. We have laws passed but the context constrains implementation. Going forward, we want to strengthen women’s leadership to push for change processes and critical decisions.

Sustainability remains a conundrum for many donor funded organisations such as FOWODE all over Africa. The big question is, what happens when the donor taps run dry? Does this deal a blow to the issues you advocate for such as gender equality?

The work we do is mostly dictated by projects because when a project ends, you need to either look for more resources to put into those areas or if the resources are not available, you just pull out. Although we have been thinking about sustainability mechanisms beyond the funding, we have been saying we need to do more.

The need to do more and sustainability is placed within a context. When we started our work about 27 years ago, we were a post crisis country. We were coming from war. Now, we are talking about middle income, things will change.

When you become a middle-income country, there are some resources that development partners divert from your country. It is assumed that you have reached a certain level and, therefore, you can address some of your own issues. That is something that is glaring at us as we think about going to middle income. But as an organisation, we know that donor funding is shrinking and especially so for women’s rights work.

Talking of building a sustainable future, FOWODE is launching an ambitious project that you have christened Imara Centre. What is the story behind Imara?

Imara is a Swahili word which stands for strong, firm resolutions. It will be a safe space where women who are facing oppression can convene and put things behind them and forge networks, social sustainability to move forward.

The Imara Women’s Centre is our contribution to the women’s movement because this is work that we cannot achieve alone as an organisation but for which we need to put our heads and hands together for a more equitable future. It will be both a visible embodiment on what we need to do in advancing women’s work. But it will also be a practical base from which we reflect, strategise and see what more we need to do as the women of this country. We hope that the centre can serve and go beyond our borders in the region.

In an age where working from home is the new normal, is a brick and mortar project like Imara the gateway to a sustainable future?

It is a space that we believe will take us away from donor dependency. It will have a museum, gallery, residence, for a quiet place for academics and workshops. The money that we generate can then feed into our work on gender equality. That is our way of thinking of financial sustainability. But we also designed this building based on the Green Architecture Movement, so it will be environmentally friendly with no air conditioners, it is self-aerated, we will be drilling our own water, use solar and we believe it will also ensure environmental sustainability.

Women are more prone to impacts of climate change than men considering that they are the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on natural resources, which climate change threatens the most. As an organisation in advancing women’s cause, would you say that Uganda is paying enough attention to this issue?

I know that we have made commitments at the global level through the sustainable development goals. We have also made commitments at our national level but when it comes to implementation and what is on ground, more needs to be done. Think about the deforestation that has happened in the country and the swamps such as Namanve that now has industries and rice growing in some of the swamps. We have the environmental management authority which should be capping on some of these vices, but it is not. We have a Minister for Disaster Preparedness but we seem to never be prepared for any disasters. When the floods or droughts come, it is like we are unprepared all the time and yet these affect women more because of the gender roles that they play. Think about the polythene bags ban that Parliament talks about but there is no implementation on the ground. The effects of climate change are on us, see how the weather patterns have changed in our country! The farmers are in dire straits. If it was supposed to be raining, now it is shining. Because our country is highly agricultural, our government needs to pay more attention to some of these issues. 

Women around the world are leading efforts at building a more sustainable future for all through such interventions as climate change adaptation, mitigation and response. In what ways are Ugandan women making a contribution in this regard?

There are more of individual efforts that are not well coordinated which if government came in and supported, maybe we would have a greater impact on some of the work that women are doing. I have seen a number of women groups coming up with biogas projects that is helping to save the environment so that they are not using more of firewood or charcoal. But because they are spread out and not well coordinated, the impact is not felt. If government came in and coordinated these groups, some of these initiatives would have a better impact. This has an element of environment, energy and also the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and work together in an intra-sectoral manner to address some of these issues.

What is your message to women as we mark this year’s Women’s Day?

All women need to work together to contribute to the advancement of the gender equality agenda from whichever space they occupy so that we can see a more equal future.

Implement laws

Everything we do revolves around getting women to be effective leaders and aligning laws, policies and budgets to address issues of women. Since 1995, we have seen many laws passed by Parliament that are progressive in addressing issues that affect women. For example, Domestic Violence Act, Anti FGM Act, Sexual Offenses Bill that has since bounced back to Parliament, Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, among others. We are saying, beyond having these laws and policies on paper, we need them to be implemented so that they can have an impact on the women.