Ramblings about Gender, climate change, Equity, community, culture

Engaging Men and Boys in addressing Climate Change Adaptation   The discussions of climate change impacts have focused more on women and girls as the most affected, and indeed I agree with the narrative. It has also gone ahead to tag them as vulnerable, which is also true, but more often we forget their capacities in addressing climate impacts, given the right resources, spaces and opportunities. A lot has been said on that, today I want to focus on men.   In the Gender Equality narratives, men have been tagged the aggressors, the abusers, the irresponsible, etc -- I also agree, but add that we also forget to engage men in the discussions to understand their behaviours and motivations.   In my gender assessments, I always facilitate separate groups of women and men and then bring them back together to generate consensus after each has shared their perspectives. In some Climate Risk Assessments I was engaged with in North Eastern and mid-western Uganda

The long struggle for Gender Equality! For gender or women justice campaigners,  just know that the struggle started long --long before and one wonders when it will end! So what is not working? step back and reflect. I stumbled on a phenomenal lady of the 17th century, Olympe de Gouges, 7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793). Born Marie Gouze,  she was a French playwright and political activist whose  feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience in those days. She stepped into the space of men, long before the days when the likes of  Napoleon thought women should be trained to be good housewives. She demanded for rights of women alongside the rights of men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror (1793_1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her associati