Women in Uganda already have an overdose of rights!

SIR— The Movement government has made so many concessions and laws pampering and appeasing women (obviously for political gain), that a Ugandan woman now has an overdose of rights. Meanwhile, the women activists (sensing their political value) are not only importunate but are fastidious in their quest for more feminine rights.I am not a male chauvinist and I am not against my mother’s quest for equal rights and equal opportunities or her emancipation from the archaic traditional vices that oppress her. I am against my mother getting superfluous rights that give her the leeway for oppressing, dominating and treating my father in a subservient manner.For instance, in the political field, women have a special political slot in all the administrative local councils (each LC has nine members) from the village level to the district level. But they also are free to contest for the other eight posts which are at stake on each of the five respective LCs.At national level, women are entitled to a special district women’s MP as an interest group. Since Uganda has 56 districts, that makes it 56 female MPs who cannot be challenged in an election by men. But the women can still contest in the other constituency slots of their areas which are open to either sex.This means that women can completely dominate politics from the grassroots to national level. If you take Uganda’s gender composition into account, where the ratio of women to men is 55 to 45, and the mere fact that democracy is dictated by numbers, then politically the men really have a raw deal. In fact, I fail to see gender sensitivity in this politics.In Uganda today, the girl has a special academic privilege of 1.5 points free, to supplement her university entry points before she even puts pen to paper in the exam. But the boy has to tussle it out on his own. Doesn’t this portray the girl as the weaker sex which needs to be spoon-fed or be given a helping hand in everything she does?The issue of domestic violence which has caused a lot of public outrage is a contentious one; but it does not need a special law to deal with it because we already have the assault law to deal with violence of any nature. For instance, the Vice-President who recently confessed to have been beaten by her husband should have reported the matter to the police and her husband would have been charged with assault. In other words, violence of any nature is criminal. Whether it is committed by a relative or a stranger. But the Ugandan women want a separate law to protect them against their beastly husbands.Women demand for equal opportunities especially in the job market; but a critical analysis of their productivity versus input at work is compromised by their biological problems like menstruation (average four days a month, 48 days a year) during which our sisters are incapacitated with a good excuse of being in the menses. Now with the stiff competition and profit in business, can you blame any one for not employing women?It is true traditional values marginalised the women through early marriages, subjecting girls to circumcision, etc. But modernity has wiped out most of these vices. As for the early marriages, there is a very effective law of defilement which cannot allow early marriages to take place. Women are creating an impression that they are being marginalised in all aspects and yet they are enjoying so many rights. The law of nature dictates that the male species is too big to be small just as the female species is by nature too small to be big; but both sexes are entitled to equal rights.Fred Kamwada DakaKampala