Abstract

Building on the conceptualisation of ‘the local’ in gender and development discourse, we explore how national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda perceive gender equality policy in the context of agriculture and climate change, to assess the potential of localised solutions to achieve gender equality. Using data from national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda (37 semi-structured interviews, 78 questionnaires), the study found that policy actors largely adhered to global gender discourses in proposing context-specific solutions to gender inequality. Our results show that although local actors identified local norms and culture as major barriers to gender equality, their proposed solutions did not address local gender norms, focussed on formal policy and did little to address underlying causes of gender inequalities. Based on the findings, we suggest that ‘the local’ should be reconstructed as a deliberative space where a wide variety of actors, including local feminist organisations, critically engage, assess and address local gender inequality patterns in agriculture and climate change adaptation processes.

摘要

基于性别和发展话语中“地方”的概念，我们探讨了乌干达的国家和次国家政策参与者如何看待农业和气候变化背景下的性别平等政策，以评估本地化解决方案实现性别平等的潜力平等。该研究使用来自乌干达国家和地方政策参与者的数据（37 次半结构化访谈，78 份问卷），发现政策参与者在提出针对性别不平等的特定情境解决方案时，在很大程度上遵循全球性别话语。我们的结果表明，尽管当地行为者将当地规范和文化视为性别平等的主要障碍，但他们提出的解决方案并未解决当地的性别规范，侧重于正式政策，并且几乎没有解决性别不平等的根本原因。