Paper short abstract:

Uganda has had an uneven history around gender equity legislative reforms since the 1990s. While some reforms succeeded, other legislative initiatives faced intense resistance. Using two policy cases, the paper raises critical questions on how women emerge as game changers in promoting gender change

Paper long abstract:

Uganda has had an uneven history and experience around gender equity policy reforms especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s to-date. These range from countrywide constitutional review processes of the early 1990s, transformative legislative reforms around land/property rights, legislative activism on domestic relations, in particular, the recent passing of the Domestic Violence Bill into an Act of Parliament in 2010. While some of these gender reforms (commonly promoted through women's collective mobilisation) were successful, other legislative initiatives faced intense resistance. This paper compares two policy cases - the 1998 legislative reform around spousal co-ownership of land, commonly referred to as the "lost clause" in the Land Act, and the 2010 Domestic Violence Act - to explore contexts that enable and/or constrain gender-transformative policy change. The paper raises critical questions regarding ways in which women emerge as critical actors in securing and consolidating gender change, the strategies they draw upon to negotiate resistance and whether the nature of policy reform influences the kind of resistance and (in effect) counter-strategies used to negotiate resistance to gender change. We also assess the implications these legislative processes have for activism around gender equity reforms. Findings indicate creative ways through which women draw on informal networks and networking practices to influence gender-equitable change, often revealing the micro, subtle gendered dynamics that animate success or failure of particular policy reform. We argue that the nature of policy reform e.g. gender status policies or doctrinal policies determines the nature of policy adoption.