Women's Rights to Participation

Home Women's Rights to Participation

We use different strategies to ensure women’s participation in infrastructure projects. We engage different actors to address barriers that prevent the participation of women in infrastructure development projects.

Participation of women in consultation processes involving infrastructure projects is generally lower than men. Women are directly and indirectly excluded due to laws, social norms and a lack of access to information. The persistence of patriarchal forces further undermines the ability of women’s inclusion and participation in processes for negotiating, reconciling, and harmonizing differences over development plans between the government and project affected persons.

Meetings are dominated by male representatives given that social norms assume men as the head of household who have rights to make decisions. The allocation of rights within customary tenure system also allows men to sell jointly titled land without consulting with their wives or obtaining their consent to sell. This sometimes means that information is not disseminated to all affected persons including women. In addition, limited access to technology such as radios, mobile phone, internets, also diminish women’s access to information related to infrastructure projects. This excludes women from forming opinions about the project.

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About Us

An association of women lawyers working to promote and protect the rights of women in infrastructure development. Infrastructure projects can result in the loss of livelihoods for women, loss of land rights, increased risks to health and safety, and greater gender inequality. We work with stakeholders to mainstream a gender perspective across the infrastructure lifecycle—planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance as a strategy for achieving positive outcomes for women such as increased labour market participation, economic empowerment, and improved health and safety.

We examine the effectiveness of existing infrastructure policies, project evaluation approaches and operational-level grievance mechanisms, among other things, to identify gaps and formulate recommendations for ensuring women’s empowerment.

Our Findings

In Uganda, there is a lack of awareness of the differentiated impacts of infrastructure projects on men and women. In all stages of the infrastructure project lifecycle, it is often wrongly assumed that men and women will benefit equally, which leads to adverse impacts on women’s rights.
Positive outcomes for women can be achieved through greater attention to gender balance in local and national decision-making and planning bodies and increased women’s participation throughout the construction and operational phases.
Access to effective remedy is often denied women for a host of legal and customary reasons; women’s rights to land are often abridged and abused, and compensation is denied.

Contact Us

SAFE COMMUNITIES AND ENVIRONMENT (SCOEN)

Martyrs Mall, Namugongo, Wakiso Uganda, P.O. Box 1672, Wakiso Uganda

info@scoen.org

+256754424429

https://www.scoen.org