Abstract:
The Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG 4 and 5) provide for the attainment
of quality education for all, including women. Africa Agenda 2063, Uganda
Vision 2040, the Third National Development Plan (NDP III) similarly all provide
unequivocal reiterations on the need for the provision of quality inclusive education
that will drive national socio-economic transformation. This is particularly
envisioned through a robust science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) education that fosters relevant science, technology and innovation (STI)
knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and competences to constitute the epicentre
of the transformation. Promoting the achievement of women in equal measure
to men in STEM and STI is critical to the socio-economic transformation agenda.
However, there exist gaps in the policy framework and the implementation of
STEM education that undermine STI educational achievement, especially for
women. This conceptual paper is aimed at examining the fragility of legal and
policy frameworks for STEM/STI education and the strategies for enhancing
STI educational achievement for females in the Ugandan context. We argue that
strengthening the policy implementation of gender-responsive STEM/STI education
is a precursor of socio-economic transformation of nations and the entire world.
The paper adopts a semi-systematic literature review methodology to examine legal
and policy documents for strengths, flaws and implementation gaps with the aim
of recommending strategies for enhancing STEM/STI educational achievement
for females in Uganda.
Keywords: Education; Gender Policy; Science; Technology; Innovation
