Researchers set out to discover challenges for female creatives

“As female artistes, most of us are not so much in leadership roles because it is hectic and we are usually bullied during policy making discussions. Female creatives have also never been recognized; we have never had any projects specifically tailored for us as it is in other sectors of the economy,” Phina Mugerwa “Masanyalaze”, singer and secretary of Uganda Musicians Association expressed some of the frustrations women creatives go through in the industry.

The creative industry has recently become a go to source of livelihood for very many young people including women. However, due to the dynamics of this male dominated industry, most young women have found it challenging to thrive and realize the full potential of their creativity.

Therefore, the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation are set to carryout research on young women and gender-based inequalities in Africa’s creative sector through a project they are calling Behind The Scenes.

The project aims to generate and disseminate evidence on the multiple and intersecting issues impacting young women creatives access to dignified and fulfilling work in 7 African countries Uganda inclusive.

Behind the Scenes takes a multi-method, multidisciplinary and participatory research and policy engagement approach to generate evidence, strengthen research capacity and advance policy and workplace action to end the marginalization of young female creatives in Uganda.

Research under the project will prioritize actively and meaningfully engaging young creatives and researchers as partners, while uniting multiple disciplines, including gender studies, the creative arts, economics, demography, sociology and social work to generate in-depth contextual understanding and yield constructive and practical findings.

While launching this research project in Kampala recently, Kirabo Suubi, a gender economist at ICRW said that female youth creative face a lot of gender inequities in the creative sector but since all these happen behind the scenes, there is no much clear evidence on how far these inequities go.

“There are gender inequities that hinder female creatives from fully benefiting from the opportunities within the creative sector. So Behind the Scenes aims to respond to the growing calls for deeper insights and the rigorous evidence to enable effective strategies that address gender disparities in Uganda’s creative sector,” Suubi said.

She added that this sector is important because it is a gold mine and the most dynamic and growing sector with a projection that by 2040, it will have contributed to 20 million new jobs in Africa alone and bring in additional $20 billion to Africa’s economy and therefore they seek to bring to light all this evidence so that collectively with policy actors and other stakeholders they come up with recommendations and solutions on how to best support these female creatives.

According to Naumo Akoryo, commissioner for Culture and Family Affairs in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, challenges faced by female creatives include lack of investment capital to produce their works, gender-based conflicts at household level due to the nature of the work, limited skilling and capacity building since many of them are not educated to the levels of men thereby not being able to utilise the knowledge and skills they have to lobby for support in their work.

“One of the biggest challenges at national level is absence of evidence based data. We last did a mapping for the creative sector ten years back. So we believe that with the evidence which is going to come out of this research, we shall use it to justify the contribution of female artistes to the economy, lobby for financing, market their work, improve their skills and address other challenges they might be facing in the sector,” she said.

The ministry in 2014 together with UBOS did a mapping where it was found that there were 42 percent women in the creative sector while the men were 58 percent. The 42 percent were mainly in film, audio visual and craft sectors. The study also showed that there were 386,000 people employed in Uganda’s creative sector with the sector contributing 3 percent to GDP. In 2022, another mapping was done still with UBOS to see how the sector is progressing but the results are not yet out.

Akoryo also noted that the ministry has developed another policy on the culture and creative industry since the one of 2006 only had only had aspects on intangible cultural heritage but not the creative and commercialization aspect of culture in the country. The new policy is due to be submitted to cabinet for approval.

SOMETHING IS BEING DONE FOR THE FEMALE CREATIVES

However, Charles Batambuze, the Vice Chairperson of the Uganda National Cultural Forum (UNCF) which is the umbrella body for associations within the culture and creative industry said they are making strides for equality within the sector with increased awareness and appreciation that even women can do certain occupations within the creative sector like deejaying, photography, directing, videography and even do them better.

He added that many businesses that are employing female creatives are now aware that people with the same level of skills and experience should rewarded the same way regardless of gender and it is being implemented.

“The best way is to support these women and put in place systems that protect them when they are at work whether during day or night. For instance, production houses or clubs can put in place policies that protect women in the workplace such that they limit instances of sex abuse and other forms of discrimination,” he said.

Batambuze further noted that through the Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women, a World Bank funded project targeting women enterprises across the entire economy, UNCF is working with Private Sector Foundation Uganda to ensure that women artistes participate and they have held several meetings with women that own businesses within the creative sector to inform them about how they can benefit from this program and take advantage of the available opportunities.

Additionally, Batambuze noted that UNCF recently drafted a project of moving around the country educating female artistes on how to use digital platforms for commercialization of their work such that there are no third parties involved after noticing that there is a challenge of digital illiteracy among creatives yet with digitalization, artistes can now earn from their craft through various digital platforms.

“The research will create for us that evidence we can use in lobbying and advocating for certain changes within the sector and change in national regulations so that they incorporate policies that adequately cater for women creative,” he said.

This research project is going to take three years with the evidence from document review unveiled towards the end of this year while that from the primary research will be unveiled in 2025 and 2026.

jjingoernest1@gmail.com