Many developing countries have been grappling with the issue of gender inequalities in education for decades. In Uganda, various measures have been put in place to promote gender equality including the implementation of Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1997. However, past research has documented that gender inequalities persist. This calls for a search for new approaches to gender equality. The key question addressed in this thesis is: To what extent is the persistence of gender inequalities in Universal Primary Education attributable to the interface between HIV/AIDS and rural livelihoods?
Ethnographic research was carried out in Luweero district in rural Uganda. The thesis reveals the complex interactions between school and household processes and the role of HIV/AIDS. It sheds light on how rural poor people’s gendered responses to livelihood stress shape actual gendered school processes and vice versa. Pupils in the context of HIV/AIDS face many livelihood problems including lack of learning materials, lunch, clothes, parents, and a favourable school environment. Some children affected and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS are required to miss school often, or arrive later at school. Others are compelled to go without learning materials. The findings show that AIDS-related livelihood stress intervenes with teacher competence. The study reveals the various ways in which gendered classroom interaction for example is shaped by the context within which pupils’ livelihoods are obtained. It emerged that teachers’ training, motivation, and working conditions are not commensurate with the level of competence required for them to promote gender equality in the era of HIV/AIDS. Teachers are not aware of pupils’ home situations. They expect children to be at the right place at the right time doing the right thing. Pupils in UPE schools complained about corporal punishment. The analysis of classroom interactions shows clear differences in the way boys and girls are addressed or react on teachers’ behaviour. Synthesis of field data revealed a need to develop certain core competences for primary school teachers in light of the HIV/AIDS impact. Five competencies specifically analysed in this research are interpersonal competence, pedagogical competence, subject matter knowledge and methodological competence, AIDS competence, and gender competence. The data also show that children’s capabilities to enjoy their educational rights still need to be redressed.
The findings bring out an urgent need for all stakeholders to devise specific measures that address the problems of girls affected and afflicted by AIDS in various ways instead of grouping them together as if all girls from a single category. HIV/AIDS contributes to inequalities through reinforcing the existing structural hindrances. The contribution of HIV/AIDS calls for urgent action. There is certainly need for stronger mechanisms to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods. Within the educational reform process ongoing attention and adjustments to work on strengthening gender equality needs to be continuously addressed from different and new perspectives and urgently calls for inclusion of the context of HIV/AIDS.
See for a more extended abstract: Wageningen University dissertation no. 4040