Why Women Leaders are Still Few

I was invited to talk to a group of young women leaders in a training organized by the MUBS Leadership Centre. My topic of discussion was “Patriarchy: How it has acted in preventing women from taking up leadership positions.” To date there are still less women as Heads of government, or as Chief Executive Officers, and even in senior management positions in organizations worldwide. In recent years, Uganda has made remarkable improvements in empowering women primarily through legislation. Despite that, there are still few women managers and leaders who are in top or senior positions in leading organizations.

The reasons for this are very simple but have increasingly become contentious. They are traced as far back when God created Adam. It is said that when he completed the creation of Adam, he was indeed pleased with himself, however, finding Adam to be lonely, he created Eve out of Adam’s rib to give Adam company.   The first difference between men and women is biological, this separates men from women. It is women who conceive and bear children. This role imposed upon them, the role of nurturing and looking after children which transformed into looking after homes. Related to biological differences, is the physical differences. Women are physically different from men imposing different roles on each. Women are less strong than men on average and this has created a difference among the roles women and men can perform. It is true that in sports for instance, women cannot compete with men in the same sport.

These differences grew with time and socialised different roles to men and women. Men were the bread winners, went out of their homes to find food while women took up the domestic chores of cooking, looking after the family, bringing up children among others. This was the traditional society and people were therefore socialized to believe that there was a difference between men and women brought about by their biological and physical differences and in the process creating different roles between men and women.

The manifestations of these differences took different forms in different situations. In homes, men were the heads of the family, a woman left her parents home to join a man and even acquired the names. In the traditional family, women would not inherit property, because families are patrilineal and take over a man’s lieange. For these reasons, women would not own property. In these homes, the decision that was always taken was to give different roles to boys and different roles to girls. Girls were assigned, the roles of cooking and looking after other children while boys were expected to go out of the homes to collect firewood, fetch water. Parents would take decisions of preferring boys to go to school because girls would be married away to other families. This is a setting for disadvantaging girls taking up not only paid jobs but starts to explain their absence in senior management positions because only a few of them may go to school.

In one of the trainings, I conducted, a participant reported that he knew a family where a father had four boys and 3 girls and had distributed property to all of them including the girls. On his death bed the boys who were well educated, some of whom were lawyers, had wanted to take away the property that had been given to girls. Another person had reported in the same training, that in their home, the father would never talk about girls because according to him the girls did not belong to the home, they would get married and move away so according to the father, girls were not part of the children.

Going from homes to schools, it has been common that girls are not expected to do certain subjects especially the science based. Science was a male subject. And what is surprising that many women believed so. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy where people believe that they can’t do something and actually find themselves not doing it. So in many schools there are few girls because the decision making preferred boys going to school. But even whether they are girls would not go for science based subjects.

From school to the workplace, you will find fewer women engineers, doctors, because there is a smaller number of girls entering the institutions and society believes that they should not be doing science subjects. Because the number of girls getting to school was smaller, you would therefore find less women in formal institution and more so, less women in managerial positions and indeed very few as top managers.

Away from the formal workplace, society did not believe that women could go into business. The demands of business include travel, being away from home and in some of these basic trade even climbing on top of lorries. Society did not accept women to take up these occupations. Of course this has changed but the expectations are still the same. Business is a man’s world. There are certain other things that were not expected of women. The world has slowly accepted wearing of miniskirts, trousers and hot pants by women in some sections of society, it is still unacceptable to dress like that.

So society has given different roles to both men and women which roles make women subservient to men. Society has not accepted yet, women taking up certain positions which are ordinarily and predominantly done by men. This is a socialization process which is a formal system of disempowering and excluding and denying women certain rights or benefits that are ordinarily enjoyed by men. This socialization process, has now been described as a process of social exclusion which is a systematic denial of rights and benefits by a group that is stronger over a group that is weak. This socialization process has led to what is called stereotyping. Stereotyping is thinking and behaving  in a manner that perpetuates certain beliefs even if they are not necessarily true.

Research on the ground describes women managers and leaders as being more objective, more fair, more empathetic and indeed better managers than men. However society has simply made us believe the contrary. This disadvantages not only women but society in general. It means society cannot take advantage of the benefits that emerge from employing women or using women to perform those activities where they excel or where they are better than men.

To overcome this, society has decided to tackle the problem. This has primarily involved legislation, affirmative action and simply training and sensitization of both men and women about the rights of women and about the need to empower them and allow them to use their knowledge for the betterment of society. Legislation is both at the national and international levels. Many governments including the government of the Republic of Uganda have enshrined the equality among men and women in their constitutions. Various laws have been put in place to promote equality. While these exist, the actual practice is different.  Some of these have largely been ignored. In Uganda, 80% of the population lives in rural areas, use traditional culture to govern themselves. And that traditional culture is how they have been socialized. That traditional culture does not allow the equality between men and women. Affirmative action is one of those measures introduced to promote women empowerment. Knowing that women were disadvantaged, Uganda’s premier University Makerere University, introduced additional points for girls to give more girls access to university education. This has led to many girls joining the university. A variety of affirmative actions, decisions, are in place to ensure that women participate in the decisions that not only affect them but affect their country. 

Uganda has had some successes in the attempt to empower women. We have had a lady Vice President H.E Wandera Kazibwe, the Speaker of Parliament. RT. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, somehow the Chief Justices are now women. There are two women Vice Chancellors in the country that is Prof. Mary Okwakol and Prof. Joy Kwesiga. We have several women CEOs Allen Kagina of URA, Sabune of Cotton Development Authority, Florence Katta of Uganda Export Promotion Board. It is now some kind of unwritten rule that if the Chair of the Board or Committee is a man, the deputy is a woman. Women are now represented in Parliament. The women movement in Uganda is very active. Hon. Miria Matembe, Prof. Maggie Kigozi, Betty Tibaleka are some of the outstanding women that are advocating for women empowerment.

What are the lessons do we pick from this

   1)    There are biological differences between men and women.

  2)    These differences create differences within the different emotional orientation between men and women for instance the hormonal difference make women react differently from men in similar situations. These differences impose certain behavioral differences between men and women.

  3)    Despite this, women are more objective, fairer and turn out to be better leaders than men.

Consequently, there is need to allow more women into the education and work system.