Women to Women Research for Economic Empowerment in Uganda: A Feminist Participatory Action Research Project

Abstract

This paper reports on a two-tiered Feminist Participation Action Research (FPAR) study which involved Participant Researchers (PRs) - a cohort of Ugandan women- in conducting research with successful Ugandan businesswomen to support the PRs’ own aspirations of owning their own businesses, and the Principal Investigator (PI) in investigating the PRs’ research processes and experiences. This project constituted the fifth stage of a longitudinal study (launched in 2004) which has investigated the challenges and opportunities for girls related to secondary school in a rural Ugandan context, as well as the ways in which education has impacted and continues to play a role in their lives as women. Findings are considered through three lenses: 1) contextualizing the relevance of the PRs’ research 2) PRs’ learnings from the research, both with respect to knowlege gained from SPs as well as fro from the research process itself; 3) PI’s learnings from the PRs about FPAR. The paper also considersactions undertaken by PRs as well a further study that resulted from this project. This study demonstrated that supporting women with the tools and resources they need to conduct their own research and build their own networks can be an empowering and trans-formative process.