A visitor comes to the door. The call goes out. Is there anyone here? Is anyone at home? From within, a woman’s voice answers. No. Nobody.   But she is there. Her daughters are there. The house is full of living, breathing human beings. Yet her answer is immediate and certain. Nobody.   This is not a lie. It is a reflex. It is a truth forged in the daily fire of being unseen. In that moment, she translates the question through a brutal cultural dictionary. “Anyone” does not m

Can a digital tool be neutral? A government launches an online portal for reporting gender-based violence. The technical achievement is clear. Now consider the woman in a rural community with poor network coverage. She might share a mobile device with her husband or brother. Does she know the portal exists? Can she access it safely, without fear of someone seeing her search history in the phone’s log? Does the form require a stable internet connection she cannot maintain? Doe

What happens when a simple act—holding a rail—becomes an excuse for violation? What does it mean when a corporation tells you your safety is less important than its profit? And what are you supposed to do when they look you in the eye and say, "We are untouchables"?   This is not a complaint. It is evidence.   It was early evening on December 27, 2025. The day after Boxing day. A busy time. I entered Capital Shoppers Supermarket in Nakawa, Kampala, opposite Makerere Universit

What does it mean to hold your peace? Is silence a shield or a cage? When does a tactical pause become a permanent surrender? I carry a specific piece of wisdom from my mother, given at the start of my marriage. She advised that when my husband began a quarrel, I should take a mouthful of water but not swallow it. Her meaning was literal. With a full mouth, you cannot talk back. This instruction was a lesson in the complex power of silence. It was both a strategy for de-escal

Your inaction is not passive. It is an active, internal transaction. In the heartbeat between seeing harm and looking away, you make a bargain. You trade her safety for your comfort. You exchange her dignity for your social ease. You choose the myth of "not my business" over the brutal truth of her reality. This is the bystander's bargain. It is the unspoken pact that holds the architecture of violence intact. We are not just witnesses; we are its guarantors, paying for our p

When the police do not come, when the law is a distant rumour, when the house is no longer a shelter, what happens? The world assumes paralysis. It expects waiting. It is wrong. Women do not just wait for rescue. They become architects. They become engineers and builders of their own safety. They survey the dangerous landscape and draft blueprints with nothing but their wits and their will. This 16 Days of Activism, we must spotlight this relentless, ingenious work. This is n

We claim to value truth. We build monuments to justice. We teach our children to speak up. Yet when a woman speaks about her violation, a different machinery engages. Our first instinct is not belief. It is interrogation. We demand evidence where there can be none. We question her memory as if trauma files a perfect report. We scrutinise her character, her past, her tone. This is not a natural response. It is a learnt, cultural reflex. It is a defence mechanism for a social o

I once sat in a room and helped a man build a cage for his wife. I did not lift a hammer. I did not twist a wire. I simply listened. A friend, a man I respected, dissected his wife’s character over a low table. He listed her flaws as if reading a defective inventory. He critiqued her failures, her tone of voice, the very space she occupied in his world. We called it venting. We called it a private moment among men. We nodded. We offered him more tea. We changed the subject.  

What do we choose to protect when we call a violent man ‘good’? The phrase echoes in the aftermath, a haunting refrain that isolates survivors and shields perpetrators. We hear it from neighbours, from relatives, even from our own conflicted minds. “But he was such a good man.” This myth of the dual identity is not a nuance. It is a lie. It is one of the most pervasive and dangerous obstacles to ending gender-based violence. It is the social alibi that lets cruelty walk free.

What does justice look like when the verdict is delivered, but the woman is still broken? The current system often fails survivors of gender-based violence. The formal, colonial-era court process can be a retraumatising labyrinth. It is alienating, slow, and focused overwhelmingly on a single question. That question is not “How is she?” It is “How do we punish him?” In this punitive model, the survivor becomes a witness for the state. Her needs are secondary to the legal proc

We are taught to recognise violence in the bruise, the broken bone, the shouted threat. But we are less adept at tracing its outlines in an empty purse, a stolen business profit, or the cold dread of an unpaid school fee. What does coercion look like when it is written in numbers, not scars? Economic violence is one of the most potent and insidious tools of control, a slow, methodical process that traps women in harm’s way as effectively as any locked door. Its weapon is not

What sound does a silenced woman make in a society that calls her suffering peace? We inherit cultural artefacts as wisdom. We rarely examine them as the foundational concrete of a pervasive silence. This silence is not an empty space. It is not a passive state. Silence is a structure, meticulously built and actively maintained. It is the most powerful tool in the ecosystem of gender-based violence. It allows violence to flourish in our homes and institutions. To understand t

The Hidden Burden of Domestic Labour What if your "day off" is just another shift? What if the rest you desperately need is being stolen by work you do not even call work? When did scrubbing floors become "self-care" instead of unpaid labour? How many of us declare a work-free weekend? We vow to steer clear of our computers and finally achieve that elusive state of "rest." Yet, we often find ourselves in a whirlwind of domestic labour. We scrub floors until they gleam, attack

What if our most trusted research methods are not just flawed, but actively harmful? What happens when the very tools we use to understand poverty and work systematically erase women's lives and rural realities?   Research can either reinforce inequality or dismantle it. In Africa, where patriarchal systems shape every institution, our research methods matter more than most acknowledge. Feminist research does not simply add women to existing frameworks. It fundamentally chall

What happens when our research documents women's empowerment while systematically erasing their oppression?   My first consultancy assignment taught me how research can miss everything that matters. I was the only woman and national consultant on a team studying a major road project. The terms of reference required attention to gender and other cross-cutting issues. The team leader assigned all these issues to me. The international experts handled the serious technical work.

What is the purpose of research? Is it to generate academic publications? Is it to catalogue problems? Or is it to create wish lists for donors? We must think carefully about this. Have you ever asked questions that cause more harm than good to the respondent? Consider a young woman who has experienced sexual violence. She already carries trauma. Your research questions can retraumatise her. This is violence.   Do you seek proper permission before asking sensitive questions?

A few years ago, I was privileged to evaluate a women’s economic empowerment programme. I will never forget Adanna's face when she handed in her loan repayment. For months, she had been participating in the programme. According to our surveys, she represented a perfect success story - regular attendance and timely repayments. But her eyes told a different story.   "Please," she whispered, "do not give me another loan."   Later, I learnt the truth. Her husband had forbidden he

I have been conducting feminist research almost all my working life. However, I kept saying I am not a feminist. I never explicitly indicated this approach in my methodology sections. I know I am not alone in this. Many colleagues prefer to sanitise the work. We avoid the feminist label while doing the core work of feminism.   This contradiction speaks to a wider reality across African research and development. It reveals the complex pressures we navigate. It also shows the q

My practical work in gender equality started at a community level. I saw a well-intentioned agricultural programme fail. It aimed to boost harvests, but by giving land titles only to men, it ignored the women who did most of the farming. These women could not access credit for better seeds. That experience taught me the true power of policy. A policy is not just a document. It is a set of rules that shapes real lives. When we learn to analyse these rules, we gain a powerful t

In the age of technology, the tools that were once seen as empowering, especially for women, are now being used to facilitate a new form of intimate partner violence (IPV): digital abuse. While technology can bridge the gender divide and empower women in many areas, it has also given rise to modern challenges where abusers exploit digital platforms to exert control, manipulate, and intimidate their partners.   What is digital abuse and how does it impact relationships? Digita