Women's Gender Roles

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Pages: 4

Bonepath and Stoper (1988:11) identified women’s gender roles as a challenge and argued that lack of political recognition of women’s reproductive and labour roles made it difficult for them to campaign because they were busy washing dishes, dispensing cough syrups to children and cleaning the house. More so Mahatma Gandhi, in his writings was a believer in harmonising and equalising productive roles of men and women which were referred to as so called „women’s Jobs Joshi (1986) quotes Gandhi, “More often than not, a woman’s time is taken up, not only by the performance of essential domestic duties, but in catering for the egoistic pleasures of her remnant of barbarism. It is high time that our woman kind freed from this incubus”. In the north …show more content…
Customary practices are fluid because they are socially embedded and are based on evolving local social and political relations. But this can potentially help or hurt women, and at a time when the clan leaders feel under siege and land scarcity is great, women have no guarantees that their just claims will be given their full consideration.” Kwasi Konadu 2009
Appeals to change the culture is met by stereotypes who claim that Africa is entitled to her cultural heritage, consequently women are subjected to various forms of human rights violation in the name of culture. In Uganda, culture and patriarchy are still deeply entrenched in many societies; hence women’s rights are undermined. In many places, women are still perceived as subordinate to men. For instance, married women though by right are said to own marital property, but they in essence do not own these properties because men are the only ones who have say over land. Decisions over properties are meant for men and not women, this view rides up to the high level of decision making that in the end seem to hinder the advocacy and achievement of women rights. This study will seek to verify how the number of women in decision making positions have affected the land ownership by
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Men threaten women who would want to own independent property as breaking the marital law and are ready for divorce. Such notions scare women in seeking to own land as it affects their relationships in their homes. This study will seek to verify the extent to which this is still an issue for women.

Lack of support from fellow women due to cultural beliefs regarding the place of women in society. The “Pull her down Syndrome”, a phenomenon which prevented women from supporting fellow women. As UWONET reported in 2011, women are comfortable supporting causes that men stand for than what women do. An advocacy for the rights of women in 2010 received negative attention by women. If women donot recognize their right to own property, that makes it very hard for the campaigns against traditional practices that hinder the rights of women to equality(kawamara