A look at women Emancipation Score card

Mable Twegumye Zake - @MableTwegumye

Mable Twegumye Zake

If Uganda was to be identified by one woman as a symbol for women movement, what category of woman in this pearl of Africa would best represent the diversities of women and girls in this country whose progress is bankable on the strides made towards championing Gender Equality. Would this woman be interpretive of the identity upon which women emancipation are founded? Would she be representing Uganda within the right context of Gender equality or using the famous line, “Women Movement”?

Once again I will refer to my twitter post during the International Women’s Day Commemoration in which I stated that, Without labels, we are all but just human beings. No one better than the other; deserve the same treatment&opportunities. I stand with you all whose voices against Gender Inequality champions equal rights for both Men and Women.

The inequalities that have stood between achieving what has been packaged as “Women Emancipation” in the shortest time for decades in Uganda are within the minds of those who haven’t seen the answer plastered in their faces all along that it shouldn’t be a fight at all.

It is just about correcting the wrongs of those that lived before us and believed that one gender deserved to enjoy the existing opportunities at the cost of another. That when children are born without the disclosure of their sex, they are only but human beings and that best describes equality, therefore why then should one be advantaged over the other on finding out the gender?

It is no wonder that men feel like this so called “fight for women emancipation” is against them which in my opinion they are right to think that way because the branding of women emancipation was channelled inadequately in certain measures that label it extreme as if there is anger towards men.

And it is for this reason that majority of men haven’t been inclusive in supporting women and girls to embrace the available opportunities that are rightly theirs as much as they are also for men.

The men who already understand that children shouldn’t be discriminated by gender have already corrected the wrongs without even reminders. Why would a girl become a victim of abuse or violence if the foundation of both children from which they are raised uplifts their rights as the same? The weapons for this cause is held by men who still hold the power to just say “Yes we love our children the same, we love our girls and women as much as they love us and we open up the opportunities for them regardless”

The gender figures that are lined up every women’s day celebration in the media; in education, Financial inclusion, gender-based violence, women in leadership, the early child marriages among others are the realities that emancipation is still far from being achieved. This is because as a country we are still struggling to set right systems and strategies that allow a girl to flourish into a successful woman just like a man would without being labelled “Independent or emancipated” because that’s what it should be and not just doing women a favour.

The struggles of women activists and NGOs' “begging” government to set policies over the years that uplift women’s rights and equality are evidence of what has been forced upon men whether some liked it or not but should that be the case?

Countries that already corrected this wrong and realised that equality for all means equal opportunities for both gender have no headlining labels of “Women Emancipation” or being buried in the detractors that have compounded it to mean if there is equality; women will neglect their wifely duties. On my knees on behalf of the women whose upbringing was forgotten after reaping from fruits of gender equality when they became wives, but may the future of Ugandan women not pay the price for those mistakes because truth is that, “he is a boy, she is a girl, they both can share the same resources unless each fails on their own account”.

That woman who would be symbolic of Uganda wouldn’t be one but a variety of girls or women regardless of their background or achievements rural or urban so long as there is a guaranteed set up for them to advance growth and allow them to develop their capabilities.

So if you ask me if emancipation has made strides, I will say keep calling it that and our men will never stop thinking women are waging war against them. Call it Gender Equality for which it will make strides when the voices of men are louder about it than even those of the women because it won’t be a fight but reckoning and everything else will fall into place.

Dalton Kaweesa - @DaltonKaweesa

Dalton Kaweesa

Just last week as the world celebrated the International Women’s Day, something happened. What started as whispers permeated through an old wall and made deafening noise – the debate on the impact of emancipation. The conversation from Legends Rugby club where I get to unwind the day to the taxi tout, conductor in the taxi that carries me to my kazigo was about whether women have really been emancipated. Of course the cynical gave the weirdest examples like until women learn to take charge of their lives, emancipation remains a fairy tale. A similar view is held by Mukono municipality woman MP Betty Nambooze Bakireke as she ably opined on NBS Television’s signature political show ‘NBS Frontline’.

In 1901, the 26th American president, Theodore Roosevelt said something that I find occasion to use herein. For anyone to predict the future, they must understand the past. Until the advent of values of the global north, a woman was everything but a human being with rights.

Many looked at women as child producing machines and in many societies, their education was never something important. But the recent curves in the education realm cast a ray of hope.

For the past five years, the population of girls in national exams has been on a constant rise even when it is not huge, but wait does it serve a normal growth in the curves. And to further cement their presence, in the recently released Advanced level certificate examinations, 2017, the females beat their male counterpart. It could be slow, some would dismiss it as simplistic but we must celebrate the small things that change the world. Education with no doubt has the bigger impact on society because it trickles into health, business to mention but a few. With education women have been able to be liberated in the health sector; the right to proper healthcare. Do you need another testament that emancipation has turned women’s world? Just a year ago, Mastercard Index of women entrepreneurship (MIWE) report indicated that 34.8 percent of business in Uganda are owned by women, making it one of the top performing African countries.

What people need to appreciate, can only be told through the story of a sport. When a runner becomes second in a race, but beats their previous record, they are said to be successful. Granted women are struggling in many fronts, it still doesn’t take away the stride they have made across the sphere. Of course I am alive to the challenges, allow me call them crumbs of the gist because that is key in society ideological overhaul which as country it has been successful. Many a man have started to appreciate the role of the woman and the patriarch wall is slowly being decimated.

What the women did, and rightly so was to make men aware that emancipation is not about who heads the home. When I attended the UN Gender parity summit in panama, a quarter of the delegates were men, a true picture that men have understood a global phenomenon. In my mass communication class, my good old professors used to say, convincing is not a right word to use when relating with anyone, she emphasized enlighten or sensitize. With statists of men at a global gender parity conference, all I can say the women have won the war of emancipation and the spoils of the battle are just a heartbeat away.