Gender at Top of the Agenda in Ugandan Ministry of Defense

“Where are all the women?” That is the simple yet profound question Community Solutions Program (CSP) Alumnus Patrick Temera asked himself when he returned to his work at the Ugandan Ministry of Defense in December 2011. Temera, a Social Development Officer who worked with the wives and widows of soldiers on income generation projects, is no stranger to women in the workplace, but he had never before noticed how few women held positions of power in his own. Fewer than five percent of the leadership positions within the Ugandan Ministry of Defense are currently held by women. “I doubt without my experience in the U.S., I would have been able to see the need to make a change.” During his fellowship as a CSP leader in Sacramento, California, he worked with the St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children, an organization in which women hold a number of key positions. Inspired by this experience, he returned to Uganda and developed a framework for gender mainstreaming in the Ministry.

"Our biggest success is to create awareness - we have put gender on the agenda - so that people know that these are issues that must be addressed alongside others."

Temera designed a study to find ways for the Ministry to empower their current and future female employees to seek out positions of leadership and equal compensation for equal work. The study found that the largest barriers women in the Ministry faced included sexual harassment, limited access to training opportunities, and being passed over for promotions. Temera’s framework addressed these issues and others through recommended gender sensitivity trainings for managers, the incorporation of women and their interests in more of the decision making bodies, and the creation of a safe, anonymous space to report harassment, as well as a zero tolerance policy towards the offenders. In the summer of 2012, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Rosettie Byendgoma ‘committed to investing’ in the gender mainstreaming program and called it a “prerequisite for a more vibrant public service.”  Temera rolled out the framework, and conducted a series of workshops aimed at educating managers and personnel within the Ministry about the framework and their role in incorporating women more fully into the workforce. When talking about what the program has achieved thus far, Temera said “Our biggest success is to create awareness – we have put gender on the agenda – so that people know that these are issues that must be addressed alongside others.”

In November of 2012 the Ministry of Public Service recognized Temera and the Ministry of Defense’s commitment to improving public sector service and accountability with the 'Service Innovation Award' in Citizen Engagement and Improving Lives for his gender mainstreaming initiative. Temera hopes that his framework will serve as a model across the other Ministries, because, as he puts it, “women have a wealth of talent that needs to be tapped into and unleashed. Their advancement can be a springboard for the development of Uganda.”

Community Solutions is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and is implemented by IREX.