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OPINION

By Babirye Milly Babalanda

I take this opportunity to congratulate all Ugandans upon coming together to celebrate International Women’s Day which was held in Katakwi district, with President Yoweri Museveni as the chief guest.

Thank you, Your Excellency, for always standing with the women on this occasion as well as in conceptualisation of programmes to transform their status for better!

The theme was Accelerating Gender Equality Through Women’s Economic Empowerment, an appropriate one that resonated well with the Government’s effort to lift up women by supporting them directly with tools, capital and inputs!

The Government has seen the logic of economically empowering its citizens as a catalyst for national transformation while taking cognisance of the wisdom of empowering those that have always been left out as the fastest way to transform a nation.

Due to cultural misconceptions, political miscalculation and sheer meanness, for long women were left behind in any serious engagements in society apart from bearing children and being pleasure objects for men. There were prejudices engendered by the patriarchal system which favoured men/boys over women/girls.

As a result, women were systematically sidelined, with an example of girls that were never given education because they were considered only as “marriage material” in exchange for cows.

It is only with the advent of NRM that the equation changed.

Finally, liberation had come to those that needed the most-alongside everyone else. That is why it is my argument that the NRM liberation struggle came for the sake of women.

Since NRM’s assumption of power, women have seen progress on all fronts. In national leadership, we have so far had two vice-presidents, H.E. Specioza Wandira Kazibwe and H.E. Jessica Alupo; two Speakers of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga and Rt. Hon. Anita Among.

We now have a woman Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Robinah Nabbanja, and a cabinet line-up with a commendable presence of women, including the First Lady, Hon. Janet Museveni who, unlike former First Ladies, who lived on state luxuries without much input in public life is fully immersed in the struggle to transform the lives of women and allow them the full dignity they deserve.

Being the Minister of Education and Sports has ensured that the girl child accesses more opportunities for education, as indeed we see from last year’s PLE, UCE and UACE where girls did better than boys.

President Museveni emphasised the importance of education for the girl child as an empowerment function, which should be further strengthened by ensuring the free component of UPE and USE is not destroyed by selfish public officials whose behaviour is reminiscent of the backward tribal chiefs of pre-colonial times that presided over mass systemicoppression of the woman and girl child.

In short, NRM has presided over a fundamental cultural shift where all citizens are equal and capable of determining their place in society by embracing government programmes. The barriers which existed against women empowerment are being torn down line by line with the last frontier being poverty.

Last year, the celebrations hinged on minimising the gender digital gap which broadens economic and social inequalities. By all measures, poverty is the greatest driver of such inequalities, after getting rid of prevalent prejudices of yesteryears.

You may educate a woman, institute legal protocols to safeguard them at every turn, admit some in powerful positions but if the majority are grappling with poverty, then true women emancipation will remain a pipe dream. Economic power is the real power driver, which determines sociocultural and political trends.

An empowered population is easier to lead, and empowering a woman is empowering a nation!

Under the Parish Development Model (PDM), the most ambitious of all government’s wealth creation initiatives, women are entitled to 30% of the sh100m in each parish.

Another 30% is for PWDs, 30% for youths (including young women) and the remainder is for all eligible categories.

From this formula, you can see that even PDM is tailored to the female gender’s interests. It is a women empowerment programme domiciled at the muluka (parish).

Never again should the woman work for the stomach alone, but grow enough to eat and feed her family and remain with a fraction to take to the market to earn money to meet her other needs!

Never again shall women remain spectators in the economic life of society; never again shall women have to solely rely on others for basic necessities which “curse” is the root cause of domestic violence, sexual exploitation and other vices that threaten the gains of the emancipation movement!

When women become financially independent, even the men strive to upgrade their own financial status in order to maintain the traditional dominance they are used to — although it also lessens the burden on their shoulders of meeting every need of a family.

That spurs a society of economic matchmaking where everybody wishes to take the next step on the economic ladder.

As the NRM Government continues to put in place policy measures that challenge the odds in the way of a woman, I urge women to champion and embrace major reforms to dismantle the array of barriers that they face at all stages of their working lives, but especially in the workplace and in the home, as parents.

The World Bank’s latest Women, Business and the Law report finds that no country — not even the wealthiest ones — grants women the same economic rights as men, hence economic stagnation since fewer than one out of every two women participate in the labour force. Closing that gap could help double economic growth and country projections in the immediate future.

Evidence shows that economies with a labour force and entrepreneurship presence that involves lots women tend to transform faster.

In short, gender equality is both a fundamental human right and a powerful engine of economic development.

Let us consolidate the programmes at our disposal to fully liberate and emancipate the woman. It will bring immediate socio-economic returns for mother Uganda. When women win, everybody wins!

The writer is the Minister for the Presidency