The United Nations (UN) secretary-general, António Guterres, has said women’s leadership is a cause today but tomorrow, it must be the norm.

“The best way to honour the commitment and bravery of women peacemakers is to open doors to their meaningful participation in all peace and political processes,” he tweeted on Saturday.

Guterres said recently that in Ethiopia, women have been victims of sexual violence and in Yemen, excluded from political processes by the warring parties, while in Afghanistan, undergoing a rapid reversal of the rights they had achieved in recent decades.

And in Mali, he noted that after two coups in nine months, “the space for women’s rights is not just shrinking, but closing”.

Situation in Uganda

It has been spoken in many circles that the gains in the women's socio-economic and political statuses over the years in Uganda can be attributed to President Yoweri Museveni's open support for the women.

Museveni says that from the very beginning, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) did not agree with the old societies’ practice of marginalizing women and went ahead to recruit them into the liberation Army even when everyone thought they would not be able to fight.

“When fighting Idi Amin in 1979, we recruited women in FRONASA but our partners did not agree with us and thought that women should be in the kitchen preparing meals for the soldiers. But in 1986, when we were totally in charge with no power sharing, we recruited them,” he said in March 2018 during the celebrations to mark International Women’s Day in Mityana district.

He said that apart from the Army, the NRM government has also empowered women to join politics, get education and own property.

“We empowered women to join politics by creating the position of the district Woman MP. That is why we have so many women in Parliament today,” he said.