Treatment seeking behaviour among poor urban women in Kampala Uganda

This thesis examines women's treatment seeking behaviour for their own illnesses and that of children underfive in Kamwokya . The focus is on the extent to which women's access to money and time use patterns affect treatment seeking. It has been argued that women's treatment seeking behaviour is influenced more by their time use than their access to and availability of money.The findings obtained through the use of case histories and in-depth interviews indicate that though women in Kamwokya have access to their own money, mainly through participation in income generating activities (business), illness management for children under-five and even more for the women themselves, remains problematic. Women are overworked and manage fragile businesses that require their personal attention and presence. Hence, treatment seeking is done in a manner that will ensure minimal disruption of businesses. Consequently children's health, and even more so, that of women , is compromised for the sake of other family needs.This thesis demonstrates that illness management is not context free, and that no one factor can explain the whole process ; it both affects and is affected by other things happening in the family. Due to the multiple roles women have to fulfil, "time use "is found to be the organising and central factor in illness management for both women and children in Kamwokya, whether from rich or poor households.The thesis concludes by suggesting that policy makers, health care providers and professionals ought to take into account the daily routines of family life in their plans and programmes. Strengthening of private sector health providers, health education programmes and increased awareness raising of male responsibilities towards their families are recommended as a way of improving the health of women and children in Uganda

Gender focused methods of research

Meeting: Climate Change and Adaptation Workshop, 25-30 January, 2010, Naivasha, KEResearch methodology should include a range of data collection methods to address the gender dimensions of vulnerability. Gender focused research reduces biases such as: treating sex/gender like any other variable and failing to put it into context; assumptions about gender neutrality and the consequent failure to provide gender sensitive research; failing to disaggregate data based on sex; failing to analyze sex-disaggregated data; failing to report the results of disparities. No single method can cover all of the issues hence it is important to combine quantitative and qualitative methods

Identifying the most deprived in rural Ethiopia and Uganda: A simple measure of socio-economic deprivation

The Extreme Deprivation Index uses easily verifiable answers to ten questions about the ownership of the most basic non-food wage goods - things that poor people in a variety of rural contexts want to have because they make a real difference to the quality of their lives. Using this Index, we define rural Ethiopians and Ugandans who lack access to a few basic consumer goods as 'most deprived': they are at risk of failing to achieve adequate education and nutrition; becoming pregnant as a teenager; remaining dependent on manual agricultural wage labour and failing to find to a decent job. As in other African countries, they have derived relatively little benefit from donor and government policies claiming to reduce poverty. They may continue to be ignored if the impact of policy on the bottom 10 per cent can be obscured by fashionably complex indices of poverty. We emphasize the practical and political relevance of the simple un-weighted Deprivation Index: if interventions currently promoted by political leaders and aid officials can easily be shown to offer few or no benefits to the poorest rural people, then pressures to introduce new policies may intensify, or at least become less easy to ignore

Some Gender Implications of the ‘Civilising Mission’ of the Anglican Church for the Acholi Peoples of Northern Uganda

Anglican missionaries arriving in Uganda’s Acholiland in 1903 saw the local peoples as in need not just of Christianisation but also of civilising. This last consisted primarily of inculcating western notions of gender identities for both men and women, with an emphasis on the wearing of gender-appropriate clothing and terminating the practices of polygyny and bride-price payment. The first missionaries considered the Acholi to have high levels of gender equality but they still believed conversion would improve women’s status through domesticating them and instilling the notion of male superiority, despite the fact that local customary rituals did not distinguish on grounds of gender. Over decades, the population gradually converted to various Christian denominations, mainly Anglicanism and Catholicism, but without abandoning their customary rituals, using them as and when required, to ward off evil or ask for rain, for instance. The most significant impact of the civilising process was arguably the institutionalisation of the notion of masculine superiority now legitimised by appeals to what happened in the Garden of Eden. The paper is based on historical documents, both published and from the missionary archives, as well as on ethnographic research into gender in the region today

Putting Children First: New Frontiers in the Fight Against Child Poverty in Africa

Despite important strides in the fight against poverty in the past two decades, child poverty remains widespread and persistent, particularly in Africa. Poverty in all its dimensions is detrimental for early childhood development and often results in unreversed damage to the lives of girls and boys, locking children and families into intergenerational poverty. This edited volume contributes to the policy initiatives aiming to reduce child poverty and academic understanding of child poverty and its solutions by bringing together applied research from across the continent. With the Sustainable Development Goals having opened up an important space for the fight against child poverty, not least by broadening its conceptualization to be multidimensional, this collection aims to push the frontiers by challenging existing narratives and exploring alternative understandings of the complexities and dynamics underpinning child poverty. Furthermore, it examines policy options that work to address this critical challenge.Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) at the University of Bergen.publishedVersio

Adolescent-led marriage in Somaliland and Puntland: A surprising interaction of agency and social norms.

INTRODUCTION: Child marriage, formal and informal unions when one or both spouses are under 18, disproportionately affects adolescent girls over boys. It has serious consequences for girls' health, wellbeing, and development. Little is known about the ways in which girls' agency and contextual social norms - unwritten rules of (un)acceptable behaviour in a group - intersect to affect child marriage practices. This paper investigates norms and agency as facilitators and obstacles to adolescent girls' marriage in Somaliland and Puntland. METHODS: Participants (n = 156) were men and women living in Somaliland and Puntland. We conducted 36 qualitative semi-structured individual interviews (12 men and 24 women). We also held 15 focus group discussions (8 in Somaliland and 7 in Puntland) with 6-10 people each (n = 120). Mixed focus groups were conducted with men and women together, and were segregated by age. RESULTS: Technology and economic deprivation were important contextual factors in explaining the prevalence of child marriage. Participants reported that adolescent girls' and boys' increased agency contributed to, rather than decreased, child marriage. Access to technology expanded adolescents' freedom from their parents' control. Adolescents used that freedom within the existing system of social norms that rewarded early (as opposed to later) marriage. CONCLUSIONS: Effective interventions that aim to reduce marriage among adolescents living in Somalia (where marriage can be a protective strategy) should integrate a social norms perspective to avoid increasing adolescent-led marriage

Logics of Affordability and Worth: Gendered Consumption in Rural Uganda

This article explores logics of affordability and worth within rural Ugandan households. Through an analysis of how worth is ascribed to certain goods, from the morally ambiguous personal consumption of alcohol and beauty products to the “responsible” category of educational spending and sanitary pads, the article demonstrates how gender norms and anxieties are marked and sustained in the consumption practices of the household, constituting what is deemed necessary, affordable, and responsible. Moral obligation is differentially distributed between genders: women are deemed responsible for household expenditure, their personal consumption preferences constrained, whereas men are able to delimit a sphere of personal consumption separate from the household, with limited accountability to its moral requirements. The gendered nature of power relations is thus revealed both in the apportioning of moral duty and in the construction of affordability through which consumption is enabled

Mobile phones and entrepreneurial identity negotiation by urban female street traders in Uganda

Mobile phones have been posited as enhancing women's entrepreneurship and gender equality in developing countries, yet empowerment outcomes are unclear. This article considers how women in the gender-segregated informal economy construct their entrepreneurial identity in relation to mobile phones and the discursive repertoires that marginalize and empower. Using data from interviews with six urban female street traders in Kampala, Uganda, it explores how these repertoires illustrate their sense of self, positioning and belonging to the business community. Normative representations and positioning of female traders can sideline entrepreneurial identity and over-validate gender identity. But, participants also negotiate entrepreneurial identity construction in response to these marginalizing influences. Although the data demonstrate that participants are equivocal about their entrepreneurial identity or fit in business, some representations are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. The article concludes by highlighting the nuanced opportunities for social change their discursive repertoires may present

Treatment seeking behaviour among poor urban women in Kampala Uganda

This thesis examines women's treatment seeking behaviour for their own illnesses and that of children underfive in Kamwokya . The focus is on the extent to which women's access to money and time use patterns affect treatment seeking. It has been argued that women's treatment seeking behaviour is influenced more by their time use than their access to and availability of money.The findings obtained through the use of case histories and in-depth interviews indicate that though women in Kamwokya have access to their own money, mainly through participation in income generating activities (business), illness management for children under-five and even more for the women themselves, remains problematic. Women are overworked and manage fragile businesses that require their personal attention and presence. Hence, treatment seeking is done in a manner that will ensure minimal disruption of businesses. Consequently children's health, and even more so, that of women , is compromised for the sake of other family needs.This thesis demonstrates that illness management is not context free, and that no one factor can explain the whole process ; it both affects and is affected by other things happening in the family. Due to the multiple roles women have to fulfil, "time use "is found to be the organising and central factor in illness management for both women and children in Kamwokya, whether from rich or poor households.The thesis concludes by suggesting that policy makers, health care providers and professionals ought to take into account the daily routines of family life in their plans and programmes. Strengthening of private sector health providers, health education programmes and increased awareness raising of male responsibilities towards their families are recommended as a way of improving the health of women and children in Uganda