Kenya Women Parliamentarians address journalists at Parliament Buildings in Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE
By DICTA ASIIMWE
In Summary
- The gender equality, equity and development law is meant to protect women and children against sexual and gender-based violence, force EAC partners states to provide free primary and secondary education for all, reduce maternal and child mortality and protect the rights of civilians during war.
- With female leaders failing to influence political decisions, the needs of women who form the majority of the population in East African remain subordinate to men.
- According to Dr Josephine Ahikire, the Dean at the School of Women and Gender Studies who designed the barometer, the challenge of the region and its leaders is that female leaders are not participating enough in the decision making process to better serve the interests of women.
A study on gender equality in East Africa has found that
despite being ranked among countries with the highest number of women in
political leadership, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania are no
different from Kenya, as real power to make decisions and deliver equity
still belongs to men.
With female leaders failing to influence political decisions,
the needs of women who form the majority of the population in East
African remain subordinate to men.
The study is titled “East African Community Gender Barometer,”
which has baseline statistics, where partner states check off progress
on implementation of the yet-to-be assented to gender equity law that
was passed by the regional assembly in March 2017. It emerged that the
large number of women in politics hadn’t made much of a difference in
achieving equity.
The gender equality, equity and development law is meant to
protect women and children against sexual and gender-based violence,
force EAC partners states to provide free primary and secondary
education for all, reduce maternal and child mortality and protect the
rights of civilians during war.
The law is also meant to get EAC partner states to achieve
gender parity in politics, so that both women and men enjoy the same
influence in budgeting and deciding which public services are the most
important for the population. This has not happened.
Dr Stella Nyanzi
In Uganda, for example, issues that affect women are generally
underfunded. Jailed Makerere University researcher Dr Stella Nyanzi has
for example pointed government’s failure to provide money for menstrual
pads for poor girls to keep them in school the month around.
Dr Nyanzi pointed an accusing finger at the man who made this
pledge in the heat of his campaign for re-election and who also holds
the ultimate authority to determine whether it would be included on the
budget, President Yoweri Museveni. According to Nyanzi, President
Museveni reneged on that promise.
But rather that encourage debate on the fundamental issues she
raised, Dr Nyanzi’s use of expletives when arguing her case instead
landed her in jail. And now, the Government wants her to undergo a
sanity test. She was released on bail on May 10.
More money needed
Other areas considered a priority for women that have been
underfunded include the failure to facilitate police officers and the
judicial system in the prosecution of those who commit gender and sexual
violence, funding for family planning and the failure to reduce the
number of women dying during childbirth.
But according to Marren Akatsa-Bukachi, the executive director
Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of
Women the Gender Barometer would change this, as women leaders will
finally get a tool they can use to engage with the men who currently
wield the real power.
She says that with the barometer, women activists and leaders
will have access to statistics that they can then use to push
governments for increased budgets.
According to Dr Josephine Ahikire, the Dean at the School of
Women and Gender Studies who designed the barometer, the challenge of
the region and its leaders is that female leaders are not participating
enough in the decision making process to better serve the interests of
women.
Power without influence
Rwanda is ranked by the Inter-Parliamentary Union as the most
female friendly country in the world where 64 per cent of
parliamentarians are women. Tanzania has 36.8 per cent, Burundi 36.4 per
cent, Uganda 32 per cent and Kenya 19.7 per cent.
But Dr Ahikire says that with these numbers East African
countries now face a paradox, where a large number of women in decision
making positions, corresponds to females increasingly drifting away from
any meaningful power that would help deliver equity for their gender.
“Creating seats for women has created a ghetto, where women are
largely represented, but critical political leadership decisions remain
male dominated,” she says.
The women are still subordinate to men and there is dismal
performance by governments in the delivery of gender justice. Such
“ghettos” are segregated places where women are then allowed to
participate in politics, but without exercising any real influence.
These include the women’s league in political parties, being
seats ring-fenced for women in national and local government elective
politics.
Dr Ahikire adds that this problem can be found at both national
and local governments, and no country is an exception. Even Rwanda where
majority political leaders are women, they still don’t make critical
decisions.
Detached
Jane Mpagi Uganda’s Director in charge of Gender and Community
Development blames the women leaders’ failure to change the fate of
womenfolk on the representative politics that pervades the region.
Ms Mpagi says that the current politics has created a situation
where female political representatives don’t participate much in
budgeting processes and are detached from the rest of the women
population.
This, she says makes it impossible for female leaders to present
issues that would bring about change in women’s lives. And sometimes
the women being represented sabotage their own cause as they lack
information.
She highlights the case of the marriage and divorce bill which
the Uganda parliament failed to pass in 2015 after ordinary women took
to the streets to protest the fact that their leaders were considering
passing such a law.
“This was a case of the women we represent turning against us,
because they had not been engaged and lacked information,” she says of
the law that has been awaiting parliament’s approval for more than 40
years.
In 2015, the law, pushed by the Uganda parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, went as far as final stage of before it was dropped.
The marriage and divorce bill would have, among other things,
helped improve property and land ownership rights for women in Uganda,
which is also among the things that the EAC gender law is supposed to
deliver.
Some critics, however, say the women movement in the region
has failed, because it pays allegiance to individual political party
politics. It is therefore unclear how the EAC barometer would address
such a problem.
Rita Atukwasa the chief executive Institute for Social Transformation says that the region lacks brave women like Dr Nyanzi.
No comments :
Post a Comment