Accordingly, 53 per cent of the graduands across all disciplines were female while 47 per cent were males. Recent statistics released by the university indicate that in 2020, the university graduated 50.5 per cent females which increased to 51 per cent in 2021, 52 per cent in 2022 as well as 2023.
A closely similar debate occurred recently during the release of Primary Leaving Examinations when the First Lady and minister of Education and Sports expressed concern over what she termed as the ongoing decline in the number of boys completing primary education in Uganda.
Why do these statistics, which, to some commentators, look insignificant, trigger anxieties in the public? What is there to know beyond the five-year statistics of apparent female progress in university completion?
There has been public debate on what probably accounts for a ‘steady’ increase in the female graduates, on the one hand, and seeming decline in males’ completion of university education, on the other. There are two broader frames within which these statistics have been received and debated.
The first category of responses entails a much more accommodative and progressive stance on the statistics as a marker of progress towards addressing historical, colonial and patriarchal gender imbalances that have pre- occupied the century-old Makerere University.
To these commentators, the trend points to the deliberate institutional investment in girls’ education and broadly the women’s emancipation agenda at Makerere and Uganda at large.
Comments of this nature zeroed on how the NRM regime and its focus on girls and women has created milestones, including in the education sector; the donor community that has tirelessly invested in girls’ scholarships and mentorship programmes; the institutional affirmative action programme in form of 1.5 additional points as a strategy to increase access to higher education, among others.
The second category of responses fall in a rather cautionary, reactionary and pessimistic stance. They push the idea that these statistics point to an already ongoing experience of the neglect of the ‘boy child’, the reversal of gender power relations, and a negative precedence in which the boy child is on a downward freefall because of the women’s emancipation programmes.
Others wondered whether affirmative action has not overperformed and thus no longer a relevant equity strategy. Yet many more predicted that these trends will soon present with dire consequences of highly empowered women without men to marry them, which will spell doom for the family structure.
Here is what we can possibly learn from the trending conversation.
DEEP-ROOTED HISTORICAL GENDER IMBALANCES
Makerere University celebrated 100 years of existence in 2022, having started in 1922 as a technical college. Founded within a Eurocentric colonial patriarchal discourse with the motto Let Us All Be Men, the male-centred character of this academic institution was later countered with the admission of the first female students in early 1945.
The pioneer ‘Makerere boys’ were trained in carpentry and mechanics with boys’ education primarily driven by the 1914-1918 artisanal demands triggered by the First World War. The curriculum later expanded in the 1920s and early 1930s to include courses such as surveying, engineering, agriculture, clerical work, telegraphy, teacher training and veterinary studies.
As women’s enrolment picked up in 1945, the university curriculum expanded to include courses such as higher arts, adult women’s course diploma, Bachelor of Arts (BA), and general education subjects including History, Social Studies, Geography, Mathematics, English and Library studies in early 1960s and 70s.
While women later gained entry into Makerere University, their entry was never on equal grounds. One of the first six pioneer women, Sarah Ntiro (RIP) recalled how she was barred from a mathematics class, revealing outright sexism.
In her book They Built for the Future: A Chronocle of Makerere University College 1922-1962, Margaret Macpherson recalls that while boys were recruited into college education to respond to the skilled labour and administrative demands of the colonial government, women’s education was framed on moral grounds, i.e., their ability to prove ‘beyond doubt, that they were ‘well- mannered’ and not likely to disrupt ‘well-intentioned’, rational men.
It would be erroneous to presume that these deep-rooted legacies of patriarchal colonialism have been overcome by state interventions of affirmative action.
INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGY FOR GENDER EQUALITY
The 1990s saw the government, and Makerere University in particular, put in place a host of mechanisms to address the historical gender imbalances in higher education.
From the 1990/1991 affirmative action for female entrants in the university to putting up institutional structures such as the Department of Women and Gender Studies; Senate committee on gender mainstreaming, and later the Directorate of Gender Mainstreaming as well gender-sensitive policies, gender discourse became a legitimate conversation at Makerere University.
There is no doubt that the current progress in females’ access and completion rates are the effect of these deliberate institutional efforts. Yet, the progress we see is still minimal and largely quantitative, far from suggesting an overhaul of the legacies of colonial, capitalist and patriarchal gender oppression that characterized the earlier years of Makerere University.
As such, these debates on female/male composition are rather healthy on different grounds, especially in an academic environment whose goal is gender transformation.
PERSISTENT GENDER INEQUALITIES
The debates have reminded us to pay a closer attention to the disciplines that have significantly contributed higher numbers of female graduates in recent years. These suggestions appealed to the academy to consider tracer studies on possible trends of student enrollment, retention as well as completion rates to arrive at the root of the gender disparities in graduation.
Graduation statistics for 2022 – 2024 indicate that females dominate only at the undergraduate programme level and remain trailing at the PhD, Master’s as well as postgraduate and undergraduate diploma programmes.
In the 2024 graduation, females dominated in the colleges of Business and Management Science (811 F: 668 M), Education and External Studies (543 F: 337 M), and Humanities and Social Sciences (942 F: 456 M). Lower numbers of female graduands remain in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
RE-THINKING MASCULINITIES IN GENDER DISCOURSES
The debates flagged an urgent call to examine the often-unexamined experience of men in gender conversations. Beyond the reactionary stance of ‘the boy child’ narrative that has at times been used in some audiences to mobilize popular counter-reaction to women’s rights, equality and gender justice, the debate has demonstrably highlighted the need to re-think the way we have understood and applied the concept of gender by interrogating the often-silenced experiences of young men as gender concerns.
There have been testimonies to the effect that boys dropping out of school is not only a real concern in universities but also lowest levels of education such as primary school as some strive to take on the traditional male provider role. Seeking to widen gender relations by examining men’s experiences, in particular exploring possibilities of masculine vulnerability, points to a gender discourse that has become of age.
Statistics of women in college life at an institution founded on an exclusive male education represent a symbolically significant step towards the transformation of a male-centred higher education system, one that is worth embracing rather than hold in suspicion. At the same time, they are a reminder of the institutional responsibility to ensure that in pursuit of equality, no forms of inequalities are reproduced.
As one of the university officials commented in the debate, “the emerging trend is a real one we need to take note of and a call on all of us to purpose to attain diversity and inclusivity. The trend is a reminder to all of us on how gender as a category of analysis has travelled from the initial gender-blind university culture – Let Us All Be Men – towards more accountable, inclusive and sustainable gender equity agendas as We Build For the Future.
Dr. Amon Ashaba Mwiine is a lecturer, Makerere University (amonmwiine@gmail.com )
Elizabeth Atuheire is a graduate student, Makerere University. (atuheirelisa19@gmail.com )
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