Mothers vs Children: Co-opting Child Rights as Gender Backlash

This paper examines how progressive rights frameworks are used as gender backlash tools to suppress feminist activism. The author engages with the events following Rehana Fathima’s political act ‘Body and Politics’, which faced strong backlash in the form of censure through law, and discourse capture. […]

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Unravelling Backlash in the Journey of Legislating Sexual Offences in Uganda

This paper interrogates the reality of gender backlash in Uganda by tracing the process of legislating on the 2019 Sexual Offences Bill (SOB). We trace the early beginnings of the Bill by highlighting the motivation that guided the framing of the Bill, the role of individual actors and alliances in pushing for the gender equity reform, and the oppositional forces against the reform. Working with participatory forms of qualitative research methods, the focus on the legislative cycle of the SOB as a policy case aimed to enable us to understand what constitutes backlash, and its drivers and manifestations. […]

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Grasping Patriarchal Backlash: A Brief for Smarter Countermoves

Nearly three decades ago the UN World Conference on Women at Beijing appeared to be uniting the international community around the most progressive platform for women’s rights in history. Instead of steady advancement, we have seen uneven progress, backsliding, co-option, and a recent rising tide of patriarchal backlash. […]

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Masculinities and Transition: Enduring Privilege?

This 2019 study focusing on Egypt, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine, include findings that progress on women’s economic advancement remains constrained by persistent and pervasive gender stereotypes, reinforcing gender segregation at work and the gendered division of labour at home, even though all of the countries are in the midst of transitions to more modern market economies. […]

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The Implications of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 on Uganda’s Legal System

This paper analyses the contents of the Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 (AHB), traces its background and status as of the time of writing, analyses the legal issues that were likely to arise before it became law and the issues that did arise with the bill still in its pre-passed state and, finally, discusses some of the positive aspects of the bill. […]

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