Presence and Absence of Gender/Women issues: An Assessment of Uganda’s 2004/5 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

The persistence of the lack of incorporation of gender/women issues in most country PRSP’s despite the fact that gender mainstreaming is a guideline in World Bank PRSP source book has attracted a lot of attention from scholars, feminists, women activists and civil society organisations. Most scholars have argued that the lack of gender in most country policy papers is mainly due to lack of local gender expertise in government offices involved in PRSP formulation. Where some reference to gender/women does occur it is attributed to a kind of ‘women’s tokenism’ in these country papers in order to access funds from World Bank/IMF. In this paper I argue that even where the PRSP formulation process is participatory as in the Uganda 2004/5 PRSP, it was not engendered or gender sensitive as expected because of the conceptualisation of gender and poverty, the misinterpretation of the phrase ‘feminisation of poverty’, the underlying gendered assumptions of macroeconomic policies being adopted and finally the lack of challenge to the cultural norms embedded in the Ugandan cultures. Relevance to Development Studies PRSP’s since inception have been a central theme in Development Studies mainly looked at by World Bank/IMF as the only way Less Developed Countries can eradicate poverty and thus achieve development. The limited presence of gender in most country PRSP’s has been argued by many scholars as a lack of gender awareness by most government offices in charge of PRSP formulation. This paper helps to bring to the forefront the gendered assumptions embedded in the Neo-classical policies mainly driving these country policy papers and hence calls for further attention to the conceptualisation of gender by development planners.