Kakaire A. Kirunda
3 September 2008
While the inception of universal primary education (UPE) was perceived as one of the solutions to educational gender inequality, research now indicates that this has not been achieved. The enrolment of girls increased dramatically such that 49.3 percent of total primary school enrolment is currently female.
But, "Despite the implementation of UPE and other deliberate measures to eradicate inequalities, there is evidence that the task is not yet complete," according to a study that was conducted to discover the reasons for the persistence of gender inequalities despite deliberate efforts to eradicate them.
The study was conducted by Dr Doris M. Kakuru of Makerere University's department of Sociology and Ms Suzan Mbatudde, a researcher with Consulting and Development International.
The duo focused on the interaction between school and household factors in rural Uganda using ethnographic methods.
They explored how various factors within the pupils' livelihoods affect their school attendance as an aspect of gender equality. Subsequently, they centred on access to water as a constraint to gender equality in a free primary education programme. Statistics show that currently, 67 per cent of Ugandan households have access to safe water.
"The findings show that there is a general lack of piped water supply and households depend on their own labour to collect water," they wrote. "The need for water intervenes more with girls' schooling than that of boys due to the nature of patriarchal norms and values."
To this, they concluded that the provision of tuition fees and other supply side-based interventions to achieve gender equality may not be successful if they are implemented in ignorance of pupils' livelihood situations.
According to them, "water is a basic human need whose supply must be guaranteed before all children can benefit meaningfully from Universal Primary Education."
Nonetheless, a ministry of finance paper on gender inequality in Uganda concurs with Kakuru and Mbatudde's findings. "Although Uganda has embraced gender mainstreaming, it is evident that gender inequalities are still persistent," the report reads in part.
Uganda ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1995, without reservations. The Constitution of 1995 enshrines gender equality in many of its provisions. The Constitution also prescribes temporary affirmative action in favour of women, among other disadvantaged groups for purposes of redressing imbalances created by history, tradition and other factors.
And indeed, over the last two decades, the Ugandan government has actively promoted women's empowerment and gender equality in both regal and policy arenas. A case in point is that for every political level, women have 30 percent of seats reserved for them.
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