Makerere University School of Women and Gender Studies (SWGS) has launched a book titled ‘Gender and Socio-Economic Change’.
Speaking during the launch on Monday, 16th May, 2022 at Makerere University, Professor Margareta Espling,one of the editors of the book, said the publication is concerned with how socio-economic change interacts with gender relations, roles responsibilities in the every day lives of women and men in Uganda.
“Recognizing the significance and relevance of the interlinkages and interrelationships between gender dimensions and aspects of culture, work, social justice, governance, conflict and violence, among others, the SWGS has undertaken research for a deeper understanding of these interrelationships and socio-economic change and transformation, and how these play out in the everyday lives of women and men in Uganda. The results of the research are the products presented in this book,” said Prof Margareta, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
“The 14 chapters presented in the book have been organized along three main themes. The first theme is community development work and everyday lives and it contains six chapters. The second theme is post-conflict and gender based violence and it contains four chapters while the third theme is mainstreaming gender in policy response and is made up of four chapters,”she added.
On his part, Prof Mukadasi Buyinza, the Director of the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training (DRGT) at Makerere University lauded the SWGS for coming up with the research journal, saying that the publication is a testimony that indeed the school is on the right course of addressing gender and development from an African perspective.
“We continue and we commit our allegiance to support you in coming up with more publications. A world free of gender inequality is our goal,”Prof Buyinza assured.
“I would also want to thank the University management for providing an enabling environment. We are yet to see more output.”
He however disclosed that despite being one of the best universities in Africa and the world at large, Makerere still has a challenge of less scholarly works.
“If we are to really cite our own scholarly works, they are not many since it’s not our culture. We should combine efforts so that we have our own publisher. With committed contributors, we shall be able to have as many scholarly works as possible,” urged Prof Buyinza.
On the other hand, Associate Professor Consolata Kabonesa, who is also the Principal Investigator of the Sida-Makerere Bilateral project on gender mainstreaming as well as coordinator of the launched book revealed that the idea of writing this book was conceived in 2014 and the process of writing started in 2018.
She added that the book is made up of researches conducted by the post-doctoral fellows funded under the Sida project and members of staff from SWGS who responded to the call for papers and whose research was funded under other projects.
“The production of this book was made possible by Sida-Mak bilateral Research Programme. We would like to thank the contributors for responding to the call, their commitment and dedication to completing the process and getting a finished product,” said Prof Kabonesa, who was also one of the contributors to the book.
Prof Sarah Ssali, the Dean SWGS thanked Sida for the overwhelming support which made the project a success.
“I welcome this milestone for one reason; In this era of decolonisation and locating Africa as a site of knowledge, through this book we have proved that we can have gender studies basing on an African background….It’s a statement that we are part of the decolonisation agenda.”
“The content of this publication shows that we are not milking, or mimicking, we are actually basing on our experience.”
Florence Ebila, a lecturer at SWGS also one of the contributors to the book, said it was an honor to be part of the project. Her chapter was based on research on Ugandan women journalists experiences of reporting during conflict and war situations.
David Mugambe Mpima, another contributor also lecturer at SWGS asserted that, “It was an interesting journey it was nice working with students and fellow lecturers to ensure the success of the book.”
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