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Hilda Tadria: proponent of gender equality and maternal health
Perspectives
Profile Hilda Tadria: proponent of gender equality and maternal health By the time Hilda Tadria had left school, she knew she wanted to help women empower themselves. As a girl growing up in Uganda in the 1960s, she tagged along on her mother’s visits to the village of Rugyeyo to teach rural women literacy and nutrition skills. Tadria’s commitment to bringing about social change led her to set up the women’s activist organisation Action for Development, in 1985, and co-found the African Women’s Development Fund, in 2001. Since 1997, and her appointment as a senior regional adviser on gender issues at the Ethiopia-based United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Tadria has worked to show the link between gender inequality and maternal health. The link between social factors, such as gender and social status, and human health are especially strong in maternal health. According to Tadria, the cultural disempowerment of women that permeates many societies in the developing world combine to create a population of women who have little autonomy about their reproductive choices, an excessive burden of care, and unequal access to prevention and treatment. Maternal health has been in the spotlight ever since world leaders committed to reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. But global efforts to achieve this Millennium Development Goal (MDG) often focus on the immediate causes of maternal mortality: a shortage of health services, poor transport facilities, and poverty. As welcome as this attention is, says Tadria, efforts such as poverty-alleviation programmes must also take the underlying factors of gender inequality and women’s rights into account: “there are a lot of economically and politically empowered women who still have no autonomy in deciding when to have children—a lot of men still feel entitled to get a son from their wife.” Tadria has also addressed the way HIV/AIDS threatens maternal health in the developing world. Between 2003 and 2004, she undertook research on the gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS for the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa. The Commission found that many HIV prevention programmes—especially those that advocate the ABC message (Abstain from sex before marriage, Be faithful, or use a Condom)—have until now largely ignored women’s lack of sexual autonomy. Women’s empowerment, says Tadria, is axiomatic to tackling HIV/AIDS and the way it affects maternal health. One of Tadria’s biggest challenges in the gender-training workshops she holds all over Africa is trying to convince men, and some women, in policymaking institutions that “gender inequality affects everything, negatively. The key issues that affect maternal health—early or unplanned pregnancies, poor nutrition, forced or unprotected sex—are all related to the subordinate position of women in Africa”, she told www.thelancet.com Vol 368 October 28, 2006
The Lancet. Many people, she finds, accept the existence of gender inequality but are less inclined to acknowledge its importance for Africa’s development, fearing that “changing the status quo would be harmful to society”. Tadria is herself testimony to the misguided nature of such fears: she is the embodiment of an empowered woman who is committed to improving development in Africa. Her loyalty to her home country of Uganda, where she was an associate professor of sociology at the National University, made her reluctant to join the brain drain of professionals who were abandoning Africa in the 1970s. Despite several years studying abroad in the UK and USA—an MA in social anthropology from Cambridge University in the 1970s, and a decade later, a PhD from the University of Minnesota—Tadria had no doubt that Africa was her home. Indeed, when she left to study in the USA, taking her two children with her, Tadria and her husband decided that he would remain in Uganda: “we were worried that if we both went, we might never come back”. Tadria went on to develop a broad range of expertise as a gender specialist during the 1990s when she worked as a consultant on gender and development at the World Bank, UN Development Programme, UN Development Fund for Women, the Ugandan Government, and other international agencies. These experiences inform her current work for the UNECA on gender mainstreaming and gender policy development. Although she agrees that important political strides are being made to empower women in Africa, the reluctance to move towards gender equality is deeply embedded in traditional patriarchal systems and cultures. For Tadria these entrenched attitudes mean that such approaches as MDG-3—which aims to promote women’s empowerment by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education—will not alone address the issue. “In Africa where cultural norms legitimise gender inequality, eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education will not guarantee women’s economic and political participation”. She suggests that “What would go a long way towards achieving not just MDG-3 but also the other MDGs is reinforcing respect for women’s rights related to education, property ownership, control of reproductive rights, and freedom from violence.” Tadria believes Africa needs an integrated approach that pays attention to these underlying causes of poor maternal health, devoting resources to empowering women and changing societal attitudes not just at political or economic levels but at the grassroots level. Only with a healthy and empowered female population will Africa truly flourish.
See Series page 1535
Priya Shetty [email protected]
1487
Profile Hilda Tadria: proponent of gender equality and maternal health By the time Hilda Tadria had left school, she knew she wanted to help women empower themselves. As a girl growing up in Uganda in the 1960s, she tagged along on her mother’s visits to the village of Rugyeyo to teach rural women literacy and nutrition skills. Tadria’s commitment to bringing about social change led her to set up the women’s activist organisation Action for Development, in 1985, and co-found the African Women’s Development Fund, in 2001. Since 1997, and her appointment as a senior regional adviser on gender issues at the Ethiopia-based United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Tadria has worked to show the link between gender inequality and maternal health. The link between social factors, such as gender and social status, and human health are especially strong in maternal health. According to Tadria, the cultural disempowerment of women that permeates many societies in the developing world combine to create a population of women who have little autonomy about their reproductive choices, an excessive burden of care, and unequal access to prevention and treatment. Maternal health has been in the spotlight ever since world leaders committed to reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. But global efforts to achieve this Millennium Development Goal (MDG) often focus on the immediate causes of maternal mortality: a shortage of health services, poor transport facilities, and poverty. As welcome as this attention is, says Tadria, efforts such as poverty-alleviation programmes must also take the underlying factors of gender inequality and women’s rights into account: “there are a lot of economically and politically empowered women who still have no autonomy in deciding when to have children—a lot of men still feel entitled to get a son from their wife.” Tadria has also addressed the way HIV/AIDS threatens maternal health in the developing world. Between 2003 and 2004, she undertook research on the gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS for the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa. The Commission found that many HIV prevention programmes—especially those that advocate the ABC message (Abstain from sex before marriage, Be faithful, or use a Condom)—have until now largely ignored women’s lack of sexual autonomy. Women’s empowerment, says Tadria, is axiomatic to tackling HIV/AIDS and the way it affects maternal health. One of Tadria’s biggest challenges in the gender-training workshops she holds all over Africa is trying to convince men, and some women, in policymaking institutions that “gender inequality affects everything, negatively. The key issues that affect maternal health—early or unplanned pregnancies, poor nutrition, forced or unprotected sex—are all related to the subordinate position of women in Africa”, she told www.thelancet.com Vol 368 October 28, 2006
The Lancet. Many people, she finds, accept the existence of gender inequality but are less inclined to acknowledge its importance for Africa’s development, fearing that “changing the status quo would be harmful to society”. Tadria is herself testimony to the misguided nature of such fears: she is the embodiment of an empowered woman who is committed to improving development in Africa. Her loyalty to her home country of Uganda, where she was an associate professor of sociology at the National University, made her reluctant to join the brain drain of professionals who were abandoning Africa in the 1970s. Despite several years studying abroad in the UK and USA—an MA in social anthropology from Cambridge University in the 1970s, and a decade later, a PhD from the University of Minnesota—Tadria had no doubt that Africa was her home. Indeed, when she left to study in the USA, taking her two children with her, Tadria and her husband decided that he would remain in Uganda: “we were worried that if we both went, we might never come back”. Tadria went on to develop a broad range of expertise as a gender specialist during the 1990s when she worked as a consultant on gender and development at the World Bank, UN Development Programme, UN Development Fund for Women, the Ugandan Government, and other international agencies. These experiences inform her current work for the UNECA on gender mainstreaming and gender policy development. Although she agrees that important political strides are being made to empower women in Africa, the reluctance to move towards gender equality is deeply embedded in traditional patriarchal systems and cultures. For Tadria these entrenched attitudes mean that such approaches as MDG-3—which aims to promote women’s empowerment by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education—will not alone address the issue. “In Africa where cultural norms legitimise gender inequality, eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education will not guarantee women’s economic and political participation”. She suggests that “What would go a long way towards achieving not just MDG-3 but also the other MDGs is reinforcing respect for women’s rights related to education, property ownership, control of reproductive rights, and freedom from violence.” Tadria believes Africa needs an integrated approach that pays attention to these underlying causes of poor maternal health, devoting resources to empowering women and changing societal attitudes not just at political or economic levels but at the grassroots level. Only with a healthy and empowered female population will Africa truly flourish.
See Series page 1535
Priya Shetty [email protected]
1487