How to Survive in the Absence of Effective Protection Policy: The ‘Aged’ in Nakawa-Uganda

This research focuses on “aged’’1 women and men from 60 years old and above in Nakawa-Uganda. Its main objective is to contribute to a policy change and improve the well-being of the aged people. This was achieved through an interrelated analysis of the ways the aged struggle to make ends meet on one hand, and the shortcomings of inadequate state protection measures. Taking a feminist standpoint epistemology, the aged became the privileged subject of knowledge through social history stories. This research first introduces the story of one aged woman which brings home the difficulties faced by many poor, aged people in Uganda who have no family to turn to and no social protection system to help them meet even their most basic needs. It reveals how the structural shifts exacerbated by social exclusion disadvantage the aged. This research reviews the main concepts on gender and social protection to latter, the aged, their livelihood and the gender-power relations. Bearing in mind that although, both aged men and women are struggling to survive, they experience the same vulnerabilities differently and also exposed to different vulnerabilities. This is attributed to social construction of gender relations in Nakawa-Uganda. This research rules out the evidence of social protection that exclude the aged. As a result, it explores new gendered ideas and possibilities to transformative social protection. Inspite of the unfulfilled obligations, a collection of different actors including the state, NGO’s, civil society and individual groups can come forward to provide social protection for the aged. Relevance to Development Studies: This research reveals that, the struggles faced by many poor, aged people normally stem from structural shifts in society exacerbated by social exclusion resulting to poverty, dissatisfaction and social disaffiliation (Paugam in (Daly and Silver 2008: 549) .This research contributes by reflecting on how policy makers can respond to a gendered policy change and improve the well being of the aged, because, state restructuring are producing new forms of inhumane injustices resulting to unequal treatment constructed as a social predicament in their own right, rather than factors that impair democratic performance.