Female Empowerment

Women; what does that word bring to mind?

For the young female students at Hope Academy’s Secondary school I want it to bring to mind images of empowered business owners, entrepreneurs, scholars and leaders. I want to introduce them to women that know how to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies, women that have the courage to buy and encourage the use of condoms. I want them to have community role models that discourage consumption of alcohol and drug use and promote healthy lifestyles. I want to see them as soccer athletes and sports participants, instead of standing on the sidelines watching the boy’s teams play. If I have to spend the next three months stopping every single girl I see to tell her she is important, she is smart, powerful and pretty, I will, and I am starting with Women’s Day.

On March 5^th I discovered no event was planned for Women’s Day in Uganda. By March 8^th I had organized an event for 150 women from the Uganda Rural Funds Women’s Empowerment Group. In celebration of the accomplishments of the local women and female students we had the schools choir sing, , brought nail polish and gave manicures and pedicures to all the women, had juice, cookies, crackers and chapatti (a mixture of flour and water, prepared to look like naan bread) and as part of my culture, a gift giving ceremony of traditional Gomez silk material, soap to promote hygiene, school supplies, glow sticks and purses. We had an opening prayer, sang the national anthem and had speeches by my fellow intern Greg about his mother and how she is an inspiration to him, Jess about the feminist movement in Australia and myself about the upcoming fair trade projects and girls group that required members. Performing as the Mistress of Ceremonies and translator was Carolyn, a local Ugandan woman and URF member. I had hoped that the event would be organized by women, for women but I noted that whenever a local man could get hold of the microphone, whether he be teacher, student or URF staff member, He thought He knew a lot about Women’s Day and spoke for a very long time (sometimes very off point, like about the King and how He went to England to solve all of Uganda’s problems....good luck with that).

The next venture I am organizing is a drop in Girls Group, where the female students and boarders of the school can meet every Wednesday after classes to discuss a different female empowerment talk each week.  I will start off by facilitating the group and will be inviting local nurses, members from the women’s empowerment group, teachers and guest speakers. It is important to me that the program is culturally relevant and sustainable so I will eventually pass the group on to a URF member.  I organized a focus group to discuss which topics the youth found most important and started with a discussion on sexual education.

The Ugandan stance on sex education is the ABC’s: Abstinence, Be faithful and then wear condoms. The age of consent is 18 in Uganda but many youth have sex much earlier and there is a problem of large numbers of the women dropping out of school due to pregnancies. Many of the girls said it was difficult to get men to wear condoms because they had so many excuses. Using a deep voice imitating a male I declared “My penis is too big for this small condom!” With the girls laughing, I continued on and placed an entire condom over my fist and said “If this condom can fit over my entire fist, it can fit a penis, so remember this moment if your boyfriend or husband does not want to wear a condom.” Then not 15 seconds later, I asked a student “What would you say to a partner that said his penis was too big for a condom?” She thought for a moment, and then cried out “Abstinence!”What followed was a 3 hour face-palm moment for me. I did not think the presentation had made any difference in the way the female youth thought about sex and I knew the information had to be presented in a different way to make an impact. So through trial and error I went back to the drawing board.

The youth read a magazine about drugs, sex and relationships called ‘Straight Talk.’ It is a good way of communicating the information because the students like the many stories and can take as long as they need to translate the words; unfortunately some of the material is incorrect. I wish I could add in that homosexuality is normal and acceptable but there were 150 hangings of all persons suspected of homosexuality in Uganda last year. Another thing I found surprising was that the age for sexual consent in Uganda is 18, much later than the 14 in Canada and the United States. It is hard to supply the youth with condoms and encourage safe sex because they are not supposed to be sexually active yet. If the school makes condoms easier to use, the institution would be seen in the community’s eyes to be endorsing underage sex.  I decided that there will be no more PowerPoint presentations, but a similar newsletter with more accurate information. After collecting anonymous questions made by the students I will respond to them along with descriptions of female anatomy, sexually transmitted infections and health topics in a monthly newsletter. A “Dear Abbey” Newsletter, if you will.  I will write the information on the computer, print it off in Masaka and make a few copies available at the school library.