1. MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
The most effective strategies and approaches for supporting gender
equality constitute empowerment and gender mainstreaming. Another
important area of focus has been capacity-building for institutions in
order to enable them to incorporate a gender equality perspective in
their work. Unfortunately most gender equality strategies and
approaches in Uganda do not target women with disabilities.
Despite the fact that women with disabilities are double discriminated
in social, cultural, political and economical spheres and more likely to
be victims of sexual abuse, they are always not included in initiatives
developed to address such challenges. However, NUWODU is trying
its level best to advocate for the inclusion of women with disabilities in
the women organizations’ strategies and approaches to gender
equality in particular but also in the mainstream strategies and
approaches in general. This third goal “Promote Gender Equality
and Empower Women” is cross cutting among all the other MDGs
goals. For instance, in order to scale up gender parity in primary
education, paying special attention to location and school specific
disability – specific gender differences, particularly on how girls with
disabilities are treated is critical.
Despite the fact that women's empowerment strategies emphasize
the importance of addressing years of discrimination against women
by devising programmes and strategies that increase women's skills,
capacities, rights, and opportunities, it is unfortunate that such
strategies do not target women with disabilities who are double
discriminated as women first and then as disabled.
Although, ideally empowerment would address ways in which
development cooperation initiatives help create the conditions
whereby women can become the agents of their own development
and empowerment, women with disabilities in Uganda have not been
involved in such initiatives.
If at all, empowerment is the ability to exercise power, then women
with disabilities should also be given opportunities to exercise power

2. in the social institutions that govern their daily lives. I do agree with
women advocates who emphasizes that empowerment cannot be
done from the outside, but something women need to do for
themselves1. Using the adage of the wearer of the shoe knowing
best where it pinches most, I think women with disabilities know their
problems best and therefore should be given opportunities to
participate in the identification, formulation and implementation of
strategies and approaches to address them. Therefore, it is
misleading to assume that governments or other external agents can
empower women with disabilities.
In a paper presented on “Approaches on Gender Equality” 2, one
aspect of empowerment that was recognized as a critical area of
concern in the Beijing Platform for Action is women's participation in
formal political structures. Critically analyzing this Uganda has
achieved much as far as representation is concerned but the
challenge is the quality of services these women with disabilities are
rendering. Most women with disabilities, though in Councilors
positions representing PWDs at the Sub counties or districts, lack the
competence to effectively advocate and lobby for the concerns of
WWDs. To make matters worse, the mainstream women
organizations do not involve WWDs in their initiatives on
empowerment for the cause. NUWODU has done its best to sensitize
these organizations but they tend each time to do not know or have
forgotten how to involve us. As both a process and a goal, women's
empowerment is fundamentally connected to democratization, human
rights and the self determination of women and men.
In this case therefore, NUWODU is thankful to the Civil Society
Capacity Building Programme that has been able to support the
empowerment of women with disabilities in Leadership and
entrepreneur skills.
Another approach to support gender equality is gender
mainstreaming which emphasizes the importance of addressing the
different impacts and opportunities that a particular programme or
policy may have on women and men. 3 The strategy focuses on
making gender equality concerns central to policy formulation,
1
Carr et al
2
DAC Sourcebook on Concepts and Approaches
3
www.undp.org/unifem

3. legislation, resource allocations, and planning and monitoring of
programmes. Using this strategy to achieve gender equality requires
changes in awareness and capacity of all personnel, and implies
strong management commitment. A knowledge base on the linkages
between gender equality and the substantive issues and processes in
organizational programmes needs to be developed, and practical
analytical skills fostered. Methodologies and tools need to be
developed and resource bases of more in-depth expertise in relevant
areas established. The biggest challenge for women with disabilities
in Uganda is making disability–specific gender concerns central to
policy formulation, legislation, resource allocations, and planning and
monitoring of programmes. Surprisingly even in the disability
movement itself, nothing much has been achieved in regard to
gender mainstreaming into the movement’s programmes.
Furthermore, NUWODU is faced with a challenge of developing a
knowledge base on the linkages between disability–specific gender
equality and the substantive issues and processes. This would not be
very difficult if funds were secured but there is a tendency of both
government and donors not considering disability–specific gender
equality issues as a priority on their agenda.
In Uganda currently, at least some development cooperation
programmes have mainstreamed disability-specific gender concerns
into their programmes. For instance the ILO/Irish Partnership is
building capacity of WWDs’ Entrepreneurs. This programme is being
implemented by the Federation of the Uganda Employers, an
organization advocating for employment issues and it is using the
twin track strategy. NUWODU has realized that if women with
disabilities are to fully benefit from development programmes and
contribute to the achievement of all the Millennium Development
Goals, then the twin track strategy must be utilized. The ILO/Irish
Partnership twin track strategy involves implementing some activities
integrating women with disabilities and women without disabilities;
and other activities being solely for women with disabilities. At the
national, although disability issues and gender issues have been
mainstreamed into its institutions, laws, and government policies, the
disability-specific gender issues are still ignored. However, even for
the disability and gender issues which have been mainstreamed,
funding and implementation is still a big challenge. As an umbrella
organization, NUWODU has already realized that women with

4. disabilities’ associations are doing their best not only to target their
advocacy and lobbying for gender mainstreaming at a national level
(institutions, laws, and government policies) and development
cooperation programmes but also mainstreaming gender issues into
their procedures and structures. However, it has been noted that
effective gender mainstreaming calls for a complete transformation of
the development agenda, so that the participation of women as
decision makers influences development priorities and activities. 4 In
this case, NUWODU has a lot to do to ensure that women with
disabilities participate in decision making positions in regard to the
Poverty Reduction Action Plan (PEAP) and hence contribute to the
attainment of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Like Schalkwvk and Woroniuk (1997),5 NUWODU’ advocacy for
mainstreaming gender do not rule out funding specific projects that
empower women to work towards equality, as it is well known that
there are some special and specific needs which cannot be
addressed by the mainstream projects.
One of the biggest challenges of incorporating an understanding of
disability-specific gender and women with disabilities' empowerment
in Ugandan institutions (ministries, parastatals, NGOs, etc.), is lack of
disability-specific gender mainstreaming know how. Although many
multilateral, bilateral, government and non-governmental
organizations have invested in training to increase staff skills in
gender analysis, nothing much has been invested to increase skills in
disability-specific gender analysis. Whereas guidelines, checklists
and gender action plans have been developed to assist staff in
programming, disability-specific gender action plans are yet to be
developed.
Both women with disabilities’ empowerment and disability-specific
gender mainstreaming strategies are relevant to efforts to build
internal institutional capacity to support disability-specific gender
equality. Empowerment strategies may focus on providing leadership
and skill training to ensure that women with disabilities can take
advantage of opportunities to rise to senior positions. Disability-
specific gender mainstreaming strategies may involve analyzing
4
Concepts and Approaches Linked To Gender Equality (Schalkwyk and Woroniuk, 1997)
5
Concepts and Approaches Linked To Gender Equality (Schalkwyk and Woroniuk, 1997)

5. differential impacts of organizational policies on women with
disabilities staff members or ensuring that disability-specific gender
concerns are taken into account in programmes.
However, it should be recognized that no single strategy can be used
to build institutional capacity to support disability-specific gender
equality. NUWODU is urging for carrying disability-specific gender
training, review of policies and programmes, incorporating disability-
specific gender-accountable procedures into recruitment and
performance evaluation procedures, issuing guidelines and
checklists, and many other activities.
It is extremely surprising how many women organizations continue to
produce policies and programmes that fail to recognize the needs of
women with disabilities, despite the fact that we have talked to them
at length.
All in all, in order to achieve the third millennium development goal
women with disabilities must be meaningfully involved in the gender
equality and women empowerment strategies. Also a twin track
strategy should be utilized and an enabling environment created to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Twin track strategy