Humanist

I just completed reading Charlotte Hardy’s book “Abby O’Leary – From Irish farm girl to London lady …” It got me thinking how it fits in the present day.

I am talking about the moral baggage we, women and girls, carry. Burdened upon us by tradition and the way we are nurtured to unquestioningly accept culturally assigned gender roles as though they be biological.

The definition of a “lady” or a “good woman” or a “well mannered woman” that society prescribed in 1870s Ireland and England seems alive in Uganda today.

How certain professions, which both women and men engage in, by the way; and which put food on the table; pay medical bills; pay school fees; are looked down upon as unladylike.

Even by those who without the income from ‘unladylike professions’ wouldn’t be able to attend the elite schools they attended or to afford the shirt on their backs. so to speak. The female provider is shamed still.

Then there is that whole burden about how cases of sexual and gender-based violence are handled. It isn’t the male aggressor’s fault, but it is the victim at fault for putting herself in that position, type of flawed logic.

The victim who was raped, often by a man much older, is the one who has disgraced her family, is the flawed logic that continues to be predominant even today.

It is valid, therefore, to surmise that this attitude may be a contributory factor to the lack of expediency in handling of rape cases by Court.

According to the Annual Crime Report 2024 by the Uganda Police Force, all victims (1,667) of cases of rape reported to the Police were women and girls.

• By the end of the year, 94.6 percent of rape cases taken to Court by the Police were still pending determination by a competent Court.
• Only 3.2 percent of rape cases that were taken to Court by Police had secured a conviction by the end of the year.

God forbid, she who was raped gets pregnant from the rape. The societal shame she is made to bear is as irrational as it is cruel double, double.

Some might think it a bit of a stretch, my take of contextualizing “Abby O’Leary” relevant today.

To you, I say, familiarize with what is happening to legal frameworks around the world, specifically of the United States, in particular, as they relate to women’s reproductive rights being take back centuries.

For those who need reminding of the moral baggage we women carry and which is immoral that we still do today, I highly recommend you read “Abby O’Leary”.

There is much more learning in the book too, about how landless smallholder farmers in Ireland were mistreated by the English. And similarities can be drawn around the world with regards to how capitalism is working.

So, when I hear of or read about half-baked statements which encourage constructive land dispossession of smallholder farmers I am alarmed.

It is pushing people off the land that makes women and girls even the more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence.

I subscribe to the assertion that many may see land as dirt, but it is brown money, from which feeds our nation.

Well, we are in the women’s month and according the Parliament of Uganda, tomorrow 3rd March 2025, the 2nd ever “women’s parliament” will be in session.

I pray that the debates focus on women’s uphill battle in the quest for justice via Uganda’s justice, law and order sector.

Recommended additional reading: “Annual Crime Report 2024 by the Uganda Police Force.”