Socio-cultural rigidities still ruin Ugandan women's success in business

By Joel Ogwang                                                                     

THEY endure agonizing pain to ensure generational continuity. They are pillars on which homesteads stand. They are women!

In a home, a woman’s name is written all over a man’s triumph. After all, behind every successful man, they say, is a woman. Because women are…men

At the national level, women’s contribution to development is significant, earning them the tag ‘Mothers of the Nation’.

But, for all their toil and selfless efforts, do women really hold befitting respect in the patriarchal Ugandan society?

According to Maggie Kigozi, the former Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) executive director, women still face major challenges in their socio-economic environs.

“A woman dressed in a busuuti (African garb) doesn’t attract as much attention as a man when it comes to getting bank loans,” she says. “In fact, she may have to come along with her husband.”

Indeed, there are many road blocks that stand in women’s way in their quest to deliver to their full potential, in spite of their 51% share of national population.

Challenges

There is a vast gender inequality gap that conscripts women to mere spectators in most games they can equally compete-in.

For starters, the unequal access to land control, a key factor of production, ensures women take-up peripheral roles in economic growth and development since, in most traditional Africa societies is a ‘no-go’ area for them.

In agriculture, just like in business and other sectors, women are mere followers but don't participate in key decision making process. For example, even when a homestead sells farm inputs, it is the women that do the harvestong whilst the men sell and keep the returns.

According to President Yoweri Museveni, a women still experience discriminatory gender biases and prejudices which inhibit their potential.

“There are still high school drop-out rates, particularly for girls,” he says. “Similarly, most women lack ownership of productive resources, particularly land.”

The land ownership question vastly explains the economic dependence of women to men. “Land is a chief collateral if one is to get a loan,” says Kigozi. “Women lack it.”

For example, a gender and productivity survey carried out by UBOS in 2008 showed that 93% of registered land in Uganda was owned by men, with only 12% of women participating in formal labour.

Cultural subordination, too, has not done women participation in development any good. The payment of bride price reduces women to just another property in a home.

Financially, women are not yet fully independent, says Karooro Okurut, the Bushenyi MP. “We are seeing 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.”

Women also continue experiencing high maternal mortality rate which stands at 435 per 100,000 per annum, one of the highest in the world.

The total fertility rate is at 6.7 children per woman, with 16% of women married by age 15 and 53% by age 18, according to the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS 2006)

The high fertility rate at 6.9 has a bearing on the provisioning of health services for women since these are by any standards, too many children per woman.

In education, where resources, scarce as they come, have to be rationed Vis a Vis other needs, it is the girl child’s future that is sacrificed.

The situation is not made any better in the employment industry, where 16.3% of women were unemployed in urban areas, compared to 7.5% for men, according to 2004 UBOS estimates.

As well, 46% of all women in the active labour force are unpaid, according to the gender and productivity survey. Only 18% of men fall here.

Women accounted for 73% of unpaid family workers and 40% in formal employment sector.

The median monthly salary for women in paid employment stands at sh40, 000, only half of a man’s take-home pay. So, with all the above in mind, isn’t the ‘mothers of the nation’ tag a mockery?

Commercial laws and taxation only work against women. In a male-dominated country, the tax regimes are uniform, yet women own few limping business enterprises, with many collapsing at infancy.

Interventions

Through the transformative leadership under the 24-year-old NRM rule, a number of women have changed their behavioral dispositions and attitude towards work.

“They now engage in hitherto male-dominated work such as road construction and maintenance,” said Museveni in his 2009 Women’s Day speech.

“I continue to encourage women to aggressively embrace the world of entrepreneurship. Women have cultivated a culture of saving and investment.”

Under the Bona baggawale (Prosperity-For-All) scheme, women entrepreneurship has increased, with 55% of micro-finance institutions (MFI) borrowers being female. As well, 16% of the registered land in Uganda is now owned by women.

Courtesy of an affirmative action drive instituted in the 1990s, women have also secured important national decision making positions.

The ministry of gender has also been instituted to deal with feminine maters- 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 obligation and entitled to the same status,” says Karooro.

In parliament, for example, there are over 100 female legislators, many having beaten men in a game where making promises is one thing and fulfilling them is quite another. 

The proportion of women in Local Councils rose from 6% in early 1990s to 44% in 2003; while in parliament it rose from 18% in 1996 to 30.4% to-date, which is the internationally recommended quota.

Some of the women holding key positions are Deputy Parliament speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, Laeticia Kikonyogo, (deputy chief justice) and Maggie Kigozi (UIA chief).

Cabinet ministers include Syda Bbumba (Finance), Namiremebe Bitamazire (Education) and Miria Mutagamba (Water).

Social transformation, however, cannot be a reality when households and individuals do not have adequate incomes.

One major impediment to the realization of economic growth and development in most developing countries is the failure to access big markets, most especially by women. This needs urgent redress.

With the establishment of the ministry of Information, Communication and Technology, women have a greater chance of accessing ICTs, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and participation in the global economy. Government will make all efforts to narrow the gender digital divide.

 “We need to increase girls' access to education and promotes cultural acceptance of their right to education,” says the President.

Due to some responsive interventions, women are slowly but steadily improving their entrepreneurship abilities, contributing 40% to Uganda’s GDP.

 “The number of women-owned projects increased from 50 to 200 in the last five-years,” says Kigozi. “They are investing in trade, hotels, construction and manufacturing industries formerly a no-go are.”

Gender equality and women's empowerment are vital to the transformation of societies for political, economic and human development.

There is clear evidence that gender equality reduces poverty which is a cause and consequence of economic growth.

However, this is still far-fetched in Uganda, requiring radical changes in the political, social and economic aspects of women’s lives.