CRIMM BLOG

Uganda has registered significant steps in promoting gender justice, equality and women’s rights in recent years. Considerable progress has been seen in women’s collective advocacy for strengthening rights in marriage, inheritance of family property and political participation since independence.     Reforms in the early 1990s provided an opportune moment to institutionalise gender equality in the country’s constitution.  But backlash actors have forced certain egalitarian and inclusive policy reforms to be postponed, watered down, bureaucratically frustrated or outrightly rejected. Backlash in this context is viewed as pushbacks, resistance, or negative reactions against women’s gains, whether real or imagined. It’s increasingly seen in subtle and organised efforts of pre-emptive moves to prevent progress as well as proactive opposition to progressive agendas. In this blog, we reflect on our recently published paper that explores one of Uganda’s most in...

By: Dr Amon Ashaba Mwiine, lecturer at the School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University, focuses on the everyday processes of ‘becoming a man’ in Uganda #CryLikeaBoy   FROM EURONEWS Until recently, there has been notable public interest in men and boys’ identities , conduct, behaviour, and the kinds of constraints men encounter in everyday life. This wave of interest is inspired, in some ways, by a critical agenda of revealing the dynamics of gender, including conversations on formerly unexamined experiences of men in public discourse, scholarship, activism and generally in everyday life. In particular, increasing focus on men, as subjects of gender conversations could spark a possible change. That change involves unpacking historical forms of patriarchal power and privilege, interrogating the social process through which masculine and feminine behaviours and practices are framed, policed and reproduced, the effect gender identities have. This wave of t...

  By: Amon A Mwiine & Elizabeth Atuheire   Introduction On the August 3 rd , 2023, we paid a visit to Naguru Remand Home as part of the academic field supervision of Makerere University students on an ongoing internship programme. In our conversation with the staff at the Home, it was noted that at the time, the home housed 6 female juveniles and 135 male juveniles. We were particularly struck by the gendered disproportionate nature of these statistics in which young men seemed overwhelmingly getting into conflict with the law. Many of these juveniles are reportedly accused of crimes related to sexual abuse e.g., defilement, theft, trespass, murder, drug abuse, among others. These statistics are not unique to Naguru remand home alone. In 2018, an annual statistical report on remand homes, rehabilitation and reception centers by the Ministry of Gender Labor and Social Development indicated that male juveniles were the highest registered throughout all Remand Homes in ...