Addressing Gender-Based Violence

One of the biggest problems facing Uganda is gender-based violence. Uganda has made some tremendous progress in terms of development, but will not get over that extra step without addressing the gender inequities that exist here. Men hold most of the power (in an effort not to generalize, I will say most and not all), in and outside of family life. Yes, women are voted or chosen as Local Council for the community and members of Parliament, but I feel these are figurehead positions rather than a position of true power. At the village level, women hold even less power.

I was astounded at the different gender roles I observed in Ethiopia. Men and women both had their assigned tasks--men to do the hard labor and plow the fields, and women to collect water and firewood and maintain the home. Seems like more reasonably assigned gender roles than Uganda, for example. In Uganda, from what I've observed, women do all the work. They are the ones walking on the edge of the road at sunrise, carrying various items-- a basket on their heads with the day's lunch, a hoe resting on their shoulders, a baby tied to their backs. After a day toiling in the fields, they return home where they are expected to rear the children, make dinner and maintain the household. What are the men doing, you ask? That's a very good question.

Gender-imbalanced societies exist all over the world, even in the United States, but especially in developing nations. One of Peace Corps Washington's initiatives is Student-Friendly Schools addressing and strategizing against school-related gender-based violence. What is gender-based violence? Briefly, it is any physical, psychological or sexual abuse against a person on the basis of gender. Usually, girls and women are the targets of GBV, but boys/men can also be victims.

We held a regional workshop in Mbarara to discuss gender-based violence, gender inequities and corporal punishment in schools. It was a successful and thought-provoking workshop that I will highly value as a part of my Peace Corps service. I helped to organize the workshop with another PCV, Jenn, who is very passionate on the subject of GBV and raising awareness in Uganda. We invited several Volunteers in the new Education group from the western region, along with their counterparts. We also invited several Ugandans to serve as keynote speakers and facilitators. This made an enormous difference to the workshop and helped foment discussion surrounding these issues, open up the dialogue between Americans and Ugandans.

Our first speaker we met at the regional HIV/AIDS in Masaka back in November-- Jenn and I both loved and remembered her. Hope is a firecracker, I wish there were more women like her in Uganda. She says herself that she breaks every mold made for Ugandan women. She's bold, brazen and passionate, a champion against domestic violence and GBV in Uganda.
She led our first session at the workshop and did a fabulous job of educating what is GBV and how to look for it in schools. With the counterparts, we analyzed several scenarios of GBV at school and how to address them. A common one across Africa goes like this: a girl is good at math, her male teacher notices her. Her offers to give her extra tutoring lessons and insists she carries his briefcase. One thing leads to another, and soon the girl finds herself being molested by the teacher. Who is in power, or who has none? In most scenarios, the girl won't say anything for fear of being failed in class or whipped as a liar. This might seem like an outlandish scenario but it is the reality in many schools.

Our next speaker was a representative of Mifumi, a Ugandan organization devoted to combatting domestic violence and GBV. The name comes from a small village outside of Tororo, to the east, where a local woman started an organization and a shelter to protect local women from domestic violence. We had some interesting discussions surrounding corporal punishment in schools, wife-beating (statistics show that more Ugandan girls than boys say that wife beating is acceptable) and types of abuse.

Our afternoon sessions involved break-out sessions where participants could choose according to their interest. Jenn and I have made some key contacts in the last year, and we invited them to facilitate. We had Hassan from Breakdance Project Uganda (you may recall them from my post about Camp BUILD), my counterpart Bright to talk about gender-equitable games using the Base Pack, PCV Taylor to give a session on making reusable menstrual pads (many girls stay home from school when they have their menstrual periods, therefore putting them more at a disadvantage), Jenn to talk about gender roles, and Tush from InMovement to talk about using music, dance and drama to inspire youth. Tush was also one of our speakers on the second day and used movement to talk about gender and GBV. Her organization will be working with our Eastern Camp BUILD/GLOW in August, so stay tuned!

Jenn's exercise with gender cards was insightful. We looked first at the difference between sex and gender (sex is biological, gender is constructed by society). Therefore, gender roles in America differ greatly from gender roles here. Next, there are three categories--Female, Male or Both-- and several cards that must be placed in each category. Things like "beautiful", "asks for sex", "aggressive", "enjoys sex" and "raises children". You can imagine where many of these cards are placed. But eventually, Jenn talks through each one and argues why it should be placed under "Both", including "gets pregnant" since it takes two to tango. This game is really interesting to do with youth, it gives great insight on how gender is viewed. For example, one of the cards says, "Beautiful". Boys will argue that a man cannot be beautiful, nor can a woman ask for sex. The keyword is "can". The point is to challenge beliefs and ask, "Well, why can't a woman enjoy sex? Why can't a man raise a child?"

I learned a lot from the workshop, issues surrounding gender and power in Uganda. I was an outsider at the workshop, an organizer not a participant, yet I came away from it realizing that I've only scratched the surface of the culture here and there's still so much to learn and understand. But one of the biggest takeaways was how strong the women are in Uganda. They can be treated like second-class citizens sometimes, and it drives me mad, but their strength indubitably commands respect.