UWONET -Women's Leadership

General

UWONET coordinates a number of CSO coalitions on key women#s rights issues. These coalitions include; CSO working group on the Marriage and Divorce Bill, the Women Democracy Group comprising of strategic women based organisations such as ACFODE. UWONET supported the development of the Women#s Manifesto focuses on 5 gender priorities of Women#s health, Women#s economic empowerment; Women#s land right, Women and girls# education and Women, Politics and decision making. The 2012/13 Uganda National Household Survey showed anoverall literacy rate of 71 percent among persons aged 10 years and above. Findings reveal that men are more literate than their female counter parts with literacy rates of 77 and 65 percent respectively. Overall, women still lag behind men in a number of important aspects and more needs to be done to address the numerous constraints to full gender equality. For example, there are still cultural attitudes and practices that are biased against women and which hinder women#s access to education, economic benefits, health services and decision-making. In regard to politics, Uganda has also implemented several initiatives aimed at strengthening women#s political participation in the country. Since 1986, Statistics indicate a steady rise in female participation in political leadership.In the 6th Parliament (1996#2001) there were 39 districts in Uganda, accordingly 39 women were elected as female district MPs. Whenthe 7th Parliament (2001#2006) was elected, Uganda had introduced 17 new districts, securing women with at least 56 seats in Parliament. Despite progress in the numbers of women in representation, the lack of visible transformative change in legislations, policies and programmes aimed at women raises pertinent questions regarding effective engagement and influence of women in politics. As perJuly 2014, none of the prominent political parties in Uganda has achieved a 50:50 representation of women as per the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (2004)that Ugandais signatory . In response to the above, Oxfam Uganda and UWONET with support from OIE will implement a 5 Year project that will focus on building women#s leadership through building a strong women#s movement that advances capacity building for women leaders. This project will be implemented be building on the foregoing project# Porticus that aimed at fostering women#s leadership by addressing issues of Violence against women, women#s land rights and implementation of the Maputol protocol. It will be implemented in Nebbi, Kotido and Lamwo Districts which already have good working relationships with the partner as well as District partners and the Women#s rights networks supported by the foregoing project. The project will seek to build capacity of womenleaders in governance. Specifically, the project will seek to achieve the following outcomes i) Women have increased opportunities and skills to participate in leadership positions in the targeted communities ii) Local government authorities in the targeted communities are aware of their duties to rights holders and existing policy and legislation on gender equality iii) Improved local capacity of partner marginalized groups/CSO#s to demand gender equality. iv) Strengthened partner capacity, coordination and reach in terms of national advocacy surrounding GBV The project through UWONET intends to continue working closely with local partners (women networks) based in the project area in the course of project implementation including Pachego Women#sClubin Nebbi District, WORUDET in Lamwo district, and NAKERE Rural Women#s Activists in Kotido district. UWONET will focus on enhancinginstitutional capacities of the networks to build activism for the enactment of gender laws and policy.