Unravelling and Countering Backlash: Uganda’s Sexual Offences Legislation

Abstract

Considerable progress has been seen in Ugandan women’s collective advocacy for their rights since independence. Notably, women activists’ efforts in the early 1990s culminated in the institutionalisation of gender equality in Uganda’s constitution and a subsequent resurgence of the women’s movement. Despite these efforts, certain egalitarian and inclusive policy reforms have been postponed, stripped of clauses that question patriarchal power, watered down, bureaucratically frustrated, or outrightly rejected. This article draws on ongoing contestations around the stalled Sexual Offences Bill, 2019 to address the following questions: How do we understand the current and recent swell of anti-feminist backlash? What motivates backlash against gender equity reforms? And what will it take to counter these oppositional forces? The article reveals overt and covert forms of backlash in the sexual offences legislative process, the ways in which gender justice actors countered these, and the implications for understanding and countering backlash in Uganda and beyond.