KARORO OKURUT
A literary and socio-political analyst

This coming week will have all roads leading to Bushenyi district, where this year’s Women’s Day celebrations on March 8 will be held.

And as Woman Member of Parliament for Bushenyi district, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome everybody to Kizinda, in Ishaka town, where we shall be gathered.

Ishaka — a busy and bustling centre of trade in the western region — is the business town of Bushenyi district and is located on the way to Queen Elizabeth National Park and Kasese.

This is the first time ever since March 8 was gazetted as Women’s Day, that Uganda is holding the celebrations in Bushenyi district. We are treating the occasion with the attention it deserves and everyone who comes over should be assured of great hospitality.

As we celebrate this day, we need to study the balance sheet of the women’s liberation movement in Uganda — what are we celebrating, what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

There are many things to celebrate as women and as a country, for we have come a long way. Perhaps the most critical of all is that Uganda, once classified as a failed state in the 1970’s and part of the 1980’s, is no longer so. A failed state is a condition of “state collapse”. This means the state can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and has no effective control over its territory and borders.

Uganda’s progression since 1986, from a failed state to one with a stable and progressive government that is in full control and powered by a leadership that is able to hold the country together and widespread people’s support, has laid the foundation for all manner of development. We cannot look at what women have achieved in isolation for whatever we have achieved is because we are no longer living in a failed state since 1986.

When we talk about achievements, two crucial things stand out: first, the visibility of women and secondly, the affirmative environment everywhere as an entrenched culture in Uganda, recognising that women had been downtrodden for too long and needed to come up. A few years ago ACFODE, one of the prominent women NGOs, published a telling book Visible at Last, which I recommend for reading.

In the area of gender, Uganda has seen an affirmative environment instituted right from the onset, evidenced by the creation of a ministry dealing with women affairs (Women in Development).

That marked the start of the paradigm alteration, in which women were no longer seen as second-rate people; but as equals with their male counterparts subject to the same social obligations and entitled to the same social status.

The affirmative action to give women a hand up featured, among other things, the introduction of bonus points for girls to enter tertiary institutions and for women to occupy one-third of all leadership positions in the governance spectrum.

We have also seen deliberate and calculated efforts to ensure that the girl-child gets as much education as her male counterparts. And there has been a lot of sensitisation on the rights of women and the girl-child, with moves to increase the visibility of women in the critical areas of our society and in the decision-making process.

As a result, today we have more than 100 female Members of Parliament, many of them having beaten men to get to where they are. We have thousands more within the various levels of the local government. The civil society sector is very vibrant, and is perhaps the one area that women are most visible in, almost to the extent of dominating the configuration of the various non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Because of this, women are able to make their voice heard very loudly, becoming an effective counterweight to the actions of the Government in many ways, but in many ways also becoming a critical non-state actor in the development process, as a partner with Government in taking the country forward.

We are seeing many women entrepreneurs coming up, establishing credible businesses and prospering in the process.

Some of these are beneficiaries of increased microfinance opportunities that are now available countrywide.

Important laws like the Domestic Violence Act and the new one against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) must be hailed as a huge step forward. But all these achievements can be traced back to the increased visibility of women and the affirmative environment. It is no longer possible to sweep women’s issues under the carpet. It is now up to us, the women, to keep on being assertive about our issues because if one prepares millet and invites you to table, they will not put it in your mouth: you must scoop it yourself.

There are, of course, still challenges that have to be surmounted in the development process with regard to the liberation of women.

Enforcement of laws that protect women is still a problem. They need to be enforced with more vigour as a deterrent to would-be offenders in areas like rape, defilement and domestic violence.

Financially, women are not yet fully independent. We are seeing many women who are suffering at the hands of men in relationships just because they have no other means of survival. This is perhaps the saddest bit of all because it amounts to slavery whichever way you look at it. There is need to find more ways that will ensure the financial independence of women, and quickly too.

Part of the problem is that although there are multifarious funding opportunities nowadays, truth be told, access to credit is still difficult because the interest rates are crazy and the grace period within which to begin servicing the loans is so short that in many cases microfinance, instead of being a solution for women, has become part of the problem.

In the education field, although we have seen an increased enrolment of girls courtesy of the free Universal Primary Education, many of them — as many as 50% of those that begin — drop out before primary seven.

This means that although this Government has also introduced free secondary education, there are less girls who are available to take up the offer.

In the field of maternal mortality, the statistics are still disturbing, with as many as 14 women dying during or shortly after childbirth everyday, owing to inadequate facilities and staffing at health centres.

This calls for rapid intervention to the effect that increased number of health centres in the country should be backed by an assurance of facilities and personnel.

The theme for this year is “Consolidating equal opportunities for women; the path to prosperity for all”.

Well-chosen theme and very telling for unless we have equal opportunities for women we cannot have prosperity for all.

More on the unequal opportunities another day.