Accelerating gender equality through economic empowerment of women

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In 2016, the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP) was launched to empower women to improve their income levels and contribute to economic development.

The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in 2020, indicated over sh106 billion had been disbursed to various women groups in the country under UWEP. Today the figure could be much more.

However, besides UWEP several other programmes are aiming to economically empower women including the Presidential Initiative on Wealth and Job Creation, and the Parish Development Model (PDM) that prioritises women who get 60% of the revolving funds.

Reports show government currently allocates sh100 million per parish per year to the Parish Development Model Fund.

In addition to improving access to financial services for women and equipping them with skills for enterprise growth, value addition, and marketing of their products and services, the government programs have also aimed to accelerate gender equality through economic empowerment of women.

Reports show financially vulnerable women are more susceptible to gender-based violence. Globally, several studies show that the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with the financial dependence of women on men.

On March 8, as Uganda joins the rest of the world to celebrate International Women’s Day under the theme “Accelerating Gender Equality through Women’s Economic Empowerment” in Katakwi district, the big question is, have the initiatives had a positive economic impact on women and have they accelerated gender equality?

According to the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) based at Makerere University the World Bank, in its 18th economic update for Uganda, said women comprise 40 percent of all business owners – “making the country one of seven countries in the world to achieve gender parity in the rate of entrepreneurial activity.” However, these businesses remain small and informal.

Also according to the 2019 Mastercard global index of women entrepreneurs, Uganda was found to be one of only seven countries that achieved gender parity in terms of the number of women driven to pursue entrepreneurial activities.

The findings indicated that one in three of all businesses in Uganda is owned by a woman, the highest rate in the Middle East and Africa region. 

However, most businesses are started out of necessity rather than opportunity, tend to lack innovation or the potential to diversify, and few grow large enough to employ others.

A 2019 World Bank report also showed that women-owned firms earn 30% less in profits than male-owned businesses, on average. Women owned only 19% of firms with more than 10 employees and only 10% of firms with 100–500 employees with a median number of only seven employees.

In 2021, Dr. Albert Byamugisha, Senior Technical Advisor on the SDGs and Head of the SDGs Secretariat, said in terms of economic empowerment, there has been increased support for women entrepreneurs through government programs.  

He said government is supporting women entrepreneurs putting women in the right position.

From some other observers the initiative has improved women’s access to financial services, and equipped them with the skills for enterprise growth, value addition, and marketing of their products and services, women have been availed with interest-free revolving credit to initiate or strengthen their enterprises.

But how factual are the observations and the impact on gender equality?

Dr. Linda Nakato a Research Fellow at the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) based at Makerere University using the example of UWEP, agrees there has been some success considering that nearly 200,000 women have benefited from the programme and nearly 18,000 different projects were started.

She however says UWEP has been limited in monitoring and evaluation of where we were before and where we are now. This is likely the case for other government programmes aimed at accelerating gender equality through economic empowerment of women.

“To answer the question of whether the programmes have had a positive economic impact on women or accelerated gender equality is a bit hard and needs impact evaluation.

“We need bigger evidence to properly answer the question, for instance, when you see the general objective of UWEP it is a bit hard to link to the question asked,” she says.

Nakato says to establish whether the programme has had a positive economic impact and celebrated gender equality through economic empowerment, calls for proper monitoring and evaluation in terms of where we are then, and now.

“Since some women got money started and business how has it closed the gap?” she says that can be only properly answered through proper monitoring and evaluation which is lacking.

The challenges

Like most wealth creation initiatives, those targeting women have been established without first doing a proper needs assessment and prioritizing the needs of these women, states Nakato.

“Moreover, these initiatives have also been implemented in a piecemeal manner which affects their sustainability.

“It should be taken into consideration that women are not a homogenous group. They have different needs based on various factors. Hence for proper targeting, a needs assessment is important before program implementation, she said.

“Further, no evaluation is done of completed and existing initiatives before rolling out new ones to establish what works and how such initiatives can be designed and implemented.

This calls for continuous monitoring of these initiatives to be able to ascertain challenges encountered and guide in reviewing their implementation and design of new initiatives.

She says evidence also shows that most women who benefit from these initiatives end up forming similar business enterprises within the same location and this causes a lot of competition in accessing the available market which makes many enterprises fail early on after inception due to unprofitability.

“There is a need for more training on income generating activities and business development services to the women before rolling out these initiatives so they can understand the vast universe of businesses that they can venture into to allow uniqueness.”

Nakato says that most initiatives have also been designed to cater to short-term targets rather than long-term impact and contribution to the economy.

“This is why we observe that most enterprises formed for example from UWEP are micro in nature,” she says.

“We need long-term support for the women to move from the current micro businesses to larger businesses to ensure sustainability.”

She also says there are some stringent requirements in accessing the funds from some of these initiatives like business registration which makes it hard for many potential grassroots women to benefit from such schemes.