Women's Day: Despotism cannot inspire inclusion

This year’s Women’s Day is being celebrated under the campaign theme ‘inspiring inclusion’ whereby women are supposed to be an indispensable part of Human and societal Development.

The NRM regime never fails to congratulate itself upon its record of pursuing a gender inclusive development paradigm.

The regime’s praise singers are always on the mark to remind us how women were liberated from the kitchen and now occupy leadership positions in the various spheres of our national life. Of course, strides have been made as far as gender equality is concerned.

However, as the system continues to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the vast majority of citizens and becomes even more repressive, the gains that were registered are fast being eroded.

The case of Olivia Lutaaya, a mother and political activist who has been in detention without trial for more than three years now is an illustration of how these gains are going down the drain.

For a government that bills itself as a leading crusader of the women’s cause to detain female political activists without trial scares away the very women it seeks to encourage to take an active role in public affairs.

How will more women step up to the plate if they know that speaking up against the excesses of power will cost them their freedom, keep them away from their families or result in death?

The system, especially the security services have weaponized gender against its opponents. We have seen women undressed in public which is calculated to humiliate them and scare them away from activities like demonstrations.

We have heard disturbing stories of rape and sexual assault of the women that have been unfortunate to fall in the hands of these security organs.

With such a record, inspiring inclusion is but a dream that will be pursued but cannot be attained.
Empowering women includes respecting their right and freedom to choose, to associate and express themselves freely. Limiting women’s choice to only supporting the status quo is nothing but benevolent sexism. This has led many to conclude that the regime’s gender equality efforts are an “autocratic gender washing” exercise informed by a desire to create an impression that the regime is advancing gender equality while actually it is meant to secure the women’s vote and to procure legitimacy for regime stability. Gender equality is thus used to devise legitimation strategies tailored to suit the despot’s objectives and not to liberate women.

Women cannot realize their full potential under a despotic dispensation because the very essence of despotism is absolute power in the hands of an individual or small group of individuals taking decisions that affect the majority. That is the same male absolutism that we are fighting against as gender activists.

The idea of women’s inclusion should therefore be seen as an integral aspect of democracy-promotion efforts, to the point where gender equality and democracy become intimately connected and inseparable “bundled norms.”

Giving women their voice while persecuting Olivia Lutaaya for making a political choice is a contradiction and flies in the face of the regime’s professed effort of inspiring inclusion.

Doreen Nyanj ura is a Gender Scholar and Deputy Lord Mayor. [email protected]