Patricia Munabi
Uganda
I call myself a feminist because I continue to question the structures, systems, institutions that
continue to subjugate women.
I live and work in Uganda for a women’s rights organisation, Forum for Women
in Democracy (FOWODE). I am the Executive Director and I oversee the overall
programmatic area of work (including monitoring and evaluation), as well as
contributing to the strategic thinking, fundraising and financial management
and oversight for the organisation. Additionally, I do lots of networking with
other like-minded organisations and sisters especially those with whom we
share similar goals.
I call myself a feminist because I believe that women are born equal with dignity
that their rights are indeed human rights and that women should be respected
irrespective of their diversities. As women, we deserve to be given space to
exercise our voice and our power. I call myself a feminist because I continue to
question the structures, systems, institutions that continue to subjugate women.
One of our biggest challenges as a feminist movement in Africa is the continued
rise in fundamentalisms. Daily religious, cultural and other fundamentalisms
continue to undermine some of the advances that have been made in the area
of women’s rights. In addition, we still struggle with “spreading our wings”
and “connecting the dots” so as to grow the feminist movement. We have
not preached the gospel as much as we should to as wide an audience as
possible. There is also a lack of understanding of feminism and many people
fight it without even understanding what it is about. Much more needs to be
done to enable both men and women to learn about feminism and unlearn
some of the things that have blocked their minds to the feminist discourse.
In order to effectively address these challenges, we ne VBF