Challenging the status quo: the enabling role of gender sensitive fathers, inspirational mothers and surrogate parents in Uganda

Abstract

Within a context where relatively few girls complete secondary education, 18 women were interviewed in Uganda with the objective of ascertaining how they were able to overcome the challenges they encountered to become well-qualified and successful career-women. An important finding from this research was that although parental involvement in Uganda is a much less formal process than that reported in literature from the Global North, it is nevertheless crucially important, with parents and other key figures enabling, supporting and encouraging the young women's education, and acting as role models. The paper highlights, however, the gendered nature of such involvement, with some fathers having the advantages of authority, education, money and time to enable them to stand apart from their communities in supporting their daughters' education. In contrast, mothers frequently struggled through lack of resources, yet their unstinting hard work and persistence offered inspiration and role modelling of a different kind. Interviewees growing up without one or both biological parents meanwhile relied on a network of people who in effect became surrogate parents, in various ways assisting them to complete their schooling.