Beyond the Ballot: The Unlevelled Ground for Women’s Political Leadership
By Georgia Tumwesigye
The dust has barely settled from Uganda’s recently concluded elections, yet the conversation around women’s participation in political leadership positions continues to resonate, echoing decades of struggle and slow progress. The 2026 polls offer a revealing lens: a moment to assess not only persistent challenges, but also the pathways towards meaningful change.
Historically, Ugandan women have been systematically sidelined from formal leadership, a reality entrenched in patriarchal norms. Studies by organisations such as the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) and the Electoral Commission analyses consistently highlight stark gender disparities. Even with affirmative action, the pipeline for women leaders remains narrow, particularly at grassroots level where financial constraints, limited education, and ingrained stereotypes deter potential candidates.
The 2026 elections revealed a dual reality. At presidential level, regression was stark. For the first time since 2001, Uganda’s presidential ballot featured no female candidates, a powerful message about barriers at the apex of power. Yet parliamentary races told a more complex story. A record 128 women contested for directly elected constituency seats, a 45% increase from 2021. Preliminary indications suggest approximately two dozen succeeded, a marginal increase from 18 in 2021. This represents both victory and the long road ahead. Women now hold approximately 34% of parliamentary seats, maintaining the critical mass needed to drive gender-responsive legislation, though open seats remain a frontier.
At local government level, the inequality was more glaring, with less than 3% women winning direct seats. At least three women are reported to have secured LCV chairperson positions (Kapelebyong, Kalangala, Sheema), while three others won mayoral seats. These victories, while numerically modest, create opportunities to centre women’s and girls’ priorities in budget decisions and development agendas.
For women candidates, a new frontier of violence emerged beyond the physical rally grounds during the 2026 cycle. We witnessed an alarming rise in technology-facilitated gender-based violence, with AI-generated deepfakes, gendered disinformation, and coordinated online attacks targeting women politicians. A young woman candidate living with HIV faced vicious personal attacks, alleging that her intention was to spread the virus across the halls of Parliament. Recognising and legislating against digital violence matters because with no specific law (beyond the Computer Misuse Act) addressing tech-facilitated gender-based violence, survivors have limited recourse.
Public campaign violence aside, a hidden struggle occurred within households. In regions like Sebei, reports indicated that women voters were directed by husbands on who to vote for or even blocked from voting altogether, a form of private electoral violence that severely undermines independent political agency. When a woman cannot cast her ballot according to her conscience, the entire premise of universal suffrage is undermined.
Yet women persist. FOWODE’s 2021 study, Women Shattering the Glass Ceiling, shows that reserved seats have served as entry points to mainstream politics, with women building grassroots networks, gaining exposure, and developing pathways to directly elected positions. The 128 women candidates are therefore celebrated for venturing into a territory traditionally declared off-limits.
The future we hope for requires deliberate action: regulating campaign financing to level the economic playing field, legislating against technology-facilitated violence, and investing in sustained civic education that normalizes women leaders in directly elected seats. Most critically, we need political parties to champion women beyond affirmative action slots, and cultural leaders to actively counter narratives that frame open seats as “men’s spaces.” Women who contested are threads of hope in a sobering narrative. The question for Uganda is whether we will build institutions worthy of their ambition.
The writer is the Women & Leadership Programme Manager at Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE)
