WUNRN
UGANDA - RURAL VILLAGES - CHALLENGES
OF GENDER EQUALITY
& WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT -
TRADITIONS - PATRIARCHY
5 May 2010
Richard
M Kavuma, Senior Staff Writer, Weekly
Observer
Newspaper - Kampala, Uganda
The fact that women need their husbands' permission to
participate in development schemes, such as the village savings and loans
associations in Katine, is a reminder of how much work still needs to be done
to change attitudes
Women in Katine
still need permission from their husbands to take part in development projects.
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty
Mary (not
her real name) has been one of the leading lights of the Village
Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) initiative in Katine. She was one of
a first women to take charge of a group
when they were first introduced into the sub-county, by Care International and
local NGO the Uganda Women's Efforts to Save
Orphans (Uweso), the as part of the Katine
project, in 2008, and has steered her group with admirable vigour. Her VSLA
saved up to $5,000 in its first year and there seemed only one way to go – up.
Then things started to fall apart
– from the top. Mary's husband complained that she was spending too much time
doing VSLA work. Then he claimed he had information she was having an affair
with one of the group members. Moreover, she had gone ahead and opted to take
injectable contraception, something he had previously opposed.
The husband's reaction was
violent. He severely beat Mary and ordered her to quit the VSLA altogether. The
group members were devastated. They became suspicious of each other over who
may have spread the rumours that they held were untrue. Savings declined
dramatically and it looked as though the group would collapse.
Now, however,
Amref project staff have
mediated between Mary and her husband. After listening to the mediator and the
group member suspected of having the affair, the husband said he realised that
the rumour was probably untrue and that he had overreacted. He has since
allowed his wife to continue with the VSLA leadership work.
"We are trying to get the
members saving again, but it is a struggle," an Amref officer told me.
"The group's morale has been badly affected."
The case of Mary is a stark
reminder of the challenges facing women who try to play their role in the
development of their families and communities.
The fact that women need their
husbands' permission to participate in a scheme like a VSLA that will eventually
help bring more food and other basic necessities into the home is a telling
reminder of how much work there is still to do to change attitudes.
Over the years, the argument has
been that taking and keeping girls in school would help their future health and
improve their families' welfare. Initially, this seems true, when you look at
Mary's life. An O-level drop-out, Mary is one of the better educated and
progressive women in her village and the sub-county. And when I first visited
her there was a modest sense of prosperity about her home.
Encountering problems
But with her passionate pursuit
of her VSLA work and her belief in family planning, she encountered problems.
My understanding of the dynamics of the situation is that the husband relented
because of the mediation and the pressure of group members. But that doesn't
mean he is happy, so it is doubtful that Mary will feel she can relax and get
on with her work in peace.
In Katine I have heard tales of
some women working in their gardens without any support from their husbands,
selling the produce and then being forced to surrender the money to their
husbands. Consequently, some of the women who borrow money from the VSLA have
resorted to doing business secretly, without telling their husbands, for fear
that the capital may be taken and, as a result, they fall behind in loan
repayments.
A social worker from Katine who
has worked with VSLAs lamented to me that some local leaders are among the men who
beat up their wives over involvement in money generating activities. She says
one member of a local council once beat his wife so badly she needed an
ambulance to take her to the local health centre and was unconscious for five
hours.
"Many of these gentlemen
claim that when their wives start getting money from the VSLAs they start
'getting the neck out', meaning that they no longer respect their
husbands," the social worker told me. Other men resent it when their wives
buy goats or new clothes once they start earning some money.
What this
suggests is that as much effort – or even more – needs to be given to speaking
to the men about women's empowerment. I think the
development community needs to do more to push for society's recognition of
women's role and place in the development process and decision making at home
and in society.
While many women are embracing
the opportunities now on offer, key obstacles remain in a traditional
patriarchal order, for which men are fairly rigid custodians. In the Sabiny
community in eastern
Interestingly, last year
NGOs certainly appear to be
easier to approach than formal criminal justice systems for the average person
in Katine. So, can the development community find creative ways to promote women's
issues in rural communities without making the men feel emasculated?
In one VSLA in Katine, it struck
me that while more than half the savers were women, they held none of the
group's official leadership positions. Could Amref and Uweso have insisted that
a certain number of the significant positions should be occupied by women? Or
should the VSLA methodology demand that married couples join the group
together, to avoid any false rumours being spread? Or should rural development
projects have a separate component to promote gender dialogue?
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