DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM

If Gender is widely used to refer to the socially constructed differences and distinctions between men and women, it is then the culturally specific set of characteristics that identifies the social position of women and men and the relationship between them.
Gender analysis is a key component of development policy in Uganda. It arose from the recognition of gender inequalities between females and males. Specifically, women were identified as being marginalized by several imbalances, of a social, historical and economic origin. This was blamed for women’s poverty, due to their limited participation in economic development.
A most fundamental miscalculation of mainstream approaches to containment of poverty and HIV/AIDS has been their failure to address gender inequality. Most women in the world have no choice over when, whether or in what circumstances to have sex. Neither have they equal land rights.  It has been noted that patriarchal nature of the society largely accounts for this. Unless gender equity is explicitly addressed, we cannot hope to tackle Poverty and HIV/AIDS effectively. This therefore justifies the use of any approaches that aims at addressing gender inequities with special reference to the Millennium Development Goals – MDG.
Also, in many communities where such women's empowerment projects take place, it is witnessed that men are naturally wary of the process, especially when it leads a wife to take action, even if subtle, to “renegotiate the gender text” It is not uncommon for husbands to question and resent their wife’s ‘empowerment’ and respond by reaffirming his power, which can sometimes even lead to physical domestic violence.
In this sense, NGO activities aimed at empowering women to improve their well-being and status both within the private sphere of the household and in the public sphere, can actually have the very opposite effect of worsening their position. It is therefore important to involve not only women but also men in the process of identifying, analyzing and acting on gender inequalities; this is integral to the GAD approach which emphasizes that the transformation of unequal, socially created, gender relations requires also for men to relinquish some of their power and preferential status, the first step to which is a recognition of how unequal power relations are played out both in and out of the home and that prescribed gender roles may actually not always be in the best interests of both parties. The prescribed masculine gender roles constrain men: they often restrict men’s role in child rearing, nurturing and caring roles… Perhaps by asserting that men have also been disadvantaged by subscribed gender roles, albeit in a different way from women, the debate can become constructive. Millennium Development GOAL 3 which aims at “Promote gender equality and empower women; Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at levels by 2015 can then be achieved.
By learning to record simple sentences of their lives, women and adolescent girls can get more confident to join associations, attend development meeting and start having the power to sit with men and discuss issues of inequality based on gender.
There is need to facilitate the process through more gender trainings, advocacy, researches, affirmative action addressing forms of gender degradation e.g. Female Genital Mutilation, domestic violence and promotion of Safe motherhood and maternal health practices.

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