• Gender
• Uganda

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• Samuels's blog
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Traditionally, both men and women, or boys and girls for that matter, fetch water. If we are to ask ourselves, is gender sensitivity about the head carrying vs hand carrying or pot vs jerry can?

A few weeks a ago, I was visiting my rural village and came across a young boy and girl coming from a well (do not ask how many kilometers they have to walk to access a well). The boy was carrying his 5 litre jerry can in his hands while the girl, probably his sister, was head-carrying hers, so I photographed them. As I continued past them, I kept thinking about whether we should continue depicting the gender stereotypes as I witnessed between these two innocent children or should we not we rather depict where we want to be -- i.e. women’s empowerment and gender equality.

One way to help women move to empowerment status is to make them aware of their rights, target men as women's rights campaigners and empower women to start businesses, among other things -- but above all develop, their confidence. The change in the socio-economic status of the household will involve a change in gender relations: namely the wife doing business together with the husband rather than the wife staying at home to attend to routine home chores.

Again as I was on my field work, I came across a husband and wife running a roadside charcoal business together and also a lady doing stone quarrying as her business, moving to empowerment status.