UGANDA: Women shoulder AIDS burden

from IRIN

In many parts of Uganda, especially rural areas, women's roles have not changed since the first Women's Day a hundred years ago. Women are still the primary caregivers, and they still don't get credit for it, according to Sylvia Tamale, the Dean of Makerere University's Law School, in the capital, Kampala.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has only added to this burden, but the type of unpaid, informal work that women do, caring for sick or orphaned family members, still goes largely unnoticed.

The theme of Women's Day for 2008 is "transforming societies to achieve political and social development" but Tamale, and many others, question whether these goals can be achieved without recognising the value of women's work outside the formal economy.

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