It’s good to be back at work in Uganda again. Of the all African countries I frequent, it seems to be the place where I spend most of my personal time, but where I actually work the least. For this assignment I traveled with Tracey Spicer, an Australian journalist and news anchor who was reporting on the work of ActionAid for the Daily Telegraph and other editorial and broadcast outlets. Spicer highlighted ActionAid‘s work on women’s rights and domestic violence in Eastern Uganda. She knows first-hand what it’s like to experience gender discrimination. Her firing in 2006 from Network Ten (via email) after returning from maternity leave garnered much attention in the media and started a nation-wide debate about gender discrimination in the workplace. Since then she has been bringing to light the stories of voiceless women who have faced hardship or abuse. Click on the article above to read[…]
Read MorePost Tagged with: "actionaid"
No Longer Silent
You would think as much as I’ve photographed the lives of women that they were getting preferential treatment here in Africa. Sadly in most cases it is the opposite. Though women are increasingly gaining more roles in government, Liberia’s current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, remains the first and only elected female head of state on the continent. Although countries like Uganda and Rwanda do have significant female representation in parliament (in both it’s mandated by law), this inclusion hardly ever trickles down to the village level. Last year there was quite an uproar in Sierra Leone when a woman made a bid to become chief. Places where women are marginalized are often places where crimes against them go ignored and unpunished. As part of my most recent assignment with AcionAid, I visited the Women Won’t Wait Centre in Mubende, western Uganda. The center is one of four such locations in[…]
Read More