Our chief guest, Mr. Alex B. Okello, Permanent Secretary of the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity, Office of the President and Member of the CPAR Uganda Board of Directors,

I remember when you used to work with the Uganda Human Rights Commission, they interviewed me, and I lost the job.

Why did I lose the job?

They asked one question. They asked me:

“How will you relate, how will you attend to your husband and your children?”

And that is the problem I had at that time. My husband was working somewhere else. I cried in front of these people. After the interview I asked myself: why did I do that? But it was something affecting me as a woman.

Both boys and girls go to look for work, but the situation of women defers from that of boys.

When you apply for a job, you may meet a certain person in some office who will try to sexually harass you. So, you find this girl failing to get a job. It happens in our society.

Let us say, you are a working woman, a young girl working. You have a husband and this husband will not allow you to attend workshops.

Is CPAR Uganda’s research work going to bring out those things?

Are we going to try and interrogate those issues?  

Why do many women go to church?

There was this role play performed by CPAR Uganda beneficiaries about church. So many women go to church. Why do they go to church?

You remember in the case of Kibwetere (Joseph Kibwetere was one of the leaders for “The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God” cult), so many women were burnt in the church. Why did they go to church? Did they really go to pray, or they had problems?

I got to understand that many of those women had problems in their relationships.

There are so many women who go to church, how are the voices of these women being attended to?

Are they listening to these women at church?

Are they trying to understand their challenges?

Some of those things I hope will also come out in the research work of CPAR Uganda.

This text is extracted from the speech that Ms. Akullo Betty gave at CPAR Uganda Lira Centre on Saturday, 17th April 2021.