Factors limiting women’s participation and influence in Kampala City Council

Abstract

The study entitled ‘Factors limiting women’s participation and influence in Kampala City Council focuses on identifying the factors that limit women’s participation in positions of leadership, establishing the ways of promoting women’s participation in leadership, and determining the relationship between women’s numerical participation in leadership and their influential participation in leadership. Kampala City Council (KCC) is used as a case study under all its five divisions namely, Kampala Central Division, Nakawa Division, Lubaga Division, Makindye Division, and Kawempe Division. Special attention was also paid to City Hall which is the headquarters of KCC because it made it easy to access vital information. The study was qualitative in design. It aimed at getting views and opinions from the respondents that freely exposed their take on women’s position as far as leadership is concerned. As a result of this design adopted in the study, questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions and documentary analysis were the appropriate research tools employed. These yielded qualitative data that suited qualitative research design. The choice of KCC as a case study is because KCC is such a big and an all encompassing institution and the information yielded from it would be more representative. This research has the establishment of the roadmap for the betterment of women’s participation and influence in leadership as its wider picture basing on KCC as a case study, assess the level of women’s participation, identify ways factors limiting women’s participation and influence in leadership, and identify ways of promoting women’s participation and influence in leadership and thereafter draw conclusions and recommendations. The study found out that numerical participation of women in leadership though still low is higher than their influential participation. When it comes to taking decisions, and making policies, men prevail over women. The study recommends affirmative action in leadership.