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As the world commemorates International Women’s Day on March 8, to take stock of economic, social, political, and cultural achievements, we must not forget to invest in grassroots women if we are to achieve gender equality. 

The world is facing many crises, ranging from geopolitical conflicts to high poverty levels, the escalating impacts of climate change, impacts of COVID-19 that left unstable economies. 

These crises affect rural women most due to the information gap, low levels of education, poverty, and socio-cultural norms among others. 

To address these crises, efforts need to be geared towards investing in local women to accelerate progress. 

This can take the forms of equipping women with knowledge of land rights, and easy access to finance among others supporting child care for them to participate in decision-making processes.  

With the representation of women in political positions, access to finance, technology, and land ownership, are the only opportunities for women who have acquired some level of education and can maneuver through the patriarchal systems to be empowered. 

While this is the case, it remains a challenge for rural women who do not know how to read and write, have no property rights, no stable economic incomes, and yet they work approximately 15-18 hours per day, bear the primary responsibility of caring for their families, that is, child-rearing, preparing food, and providing for basic needs, such as education and health care. 

Like their agricultural work, this household work is unpaid for and undervalued. 

Women are responsible for 80% of food production for consumption, and provide about 50% of the labor for cash crop production; In all, women provide about 70% of Uganda's total agricultural labour, however, they are rarely and inadequately compensated for this work, since traditional divisions of labour give men the responsibility of marketing and control over the proceeds. 

In other words, women rarely see the income earned from their labour, even on crops. 

On interacting with women in the districts that NAPE operates in that is Hoima, Kikuube, and Bullisa among others they have mentioned that even when women obtain loans and grow their food upon harvest their husbands sell the products, and the women are left struggling to pay back the loans without any means of income, they have limited property rights, unequal pay, lack of access to credit, organizational support, training, and market information. 

These raises questions on how effective government programmes such as Parish Development Model (PDM), Emyoga, Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP), and Council for Economic Empowerment for Women for Africa have been in addressing poverty and empowering women. 

Because such barriers when left unattended to, there is little or no benefit that the grass root women obtain from such programmes meant to empower them. 

Due to the above several experiences, NAPE has opted to build a strong grassroots women's movement of 50,000 women to address Food sovereignty, extractives & fossil fuels, and bodily autonomy. 

These women and girls will take action to collectively resist and make the change women have thought of, imagined, and desired. 

A change that will make them food sovereign and empower them to have a say on their land, create sustainable development alternatives that do not impact the ecosystems and women’s rights, and take up leadership positions within their communities so that they have a voice on issues affecting them to accelerate progress. 

Therefore, our calls of action to government and development partners are; to invest in women, as a human rights issue, gender inequality is the greatest human rights challenge.

End poverty: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 14 million people have fallen into severe poverty since 2020 in Uganda. 

Immediate action is crucial to prevent over 10 million women and girls likely to live in poverty by 2030. 

Implement gender-responsive financing to create an enabling environment for women to participate in empowerment programmes without any hindrance due to their roles and care for children.

Provide financing to women-led farming: This would enable grassroots women to make organic chemicals for their crops and develop energy-saving technologies in this era of climate change and the lack of a grid in some areas. 

Enable technologies that would turn domestic wastes into fertilizers, procure irrigation equipment, and desist from rain-fed agriculture. Procure meteorological equipment to inform them about the weather patterns among others  

Provide sustainable development alternatives such as renewable energy, energy energy-saving stoves that do not put women at the risk of climate change and land grabbing. 

Support feminist change-makers being part of the women's movement because feminist organizations receive inadequate financing from official development assistance. We need to make women and girls appreciate feminist concepts for them to be economically empowered. 

The writer is the Gender & Legal Officer of NAPE.