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HOW EDUCATIONAL LEVEL INFLUENCES ACCESS TO JUSTICE AMONG WOMEN.
CASE STUDY OF WANDEGEYA WOMEN MARKET VENDORS AND MAKERERE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW FEMALE LECTURERS
CHAPTER ONE
- Background
Globally ensuring equal access to justice is a fundamental aspect of upholding human rights and promoting societal well-being. However, this access is not always equitable, with marginalized groups such as women often facing significant barriers in seeking and obtaining justice (Fitz-Gibbon, & Pfitzner, 2021). The grave state of affairs regarding accessing justice can be gauged by the fact that an estimated 5.1 billion people which constitute 66% of the world population are left out of the ambit of justice. Groups such as women and marginalized ones are at the margins of the justice system as they often face social and institutional barriers to accessing justice, such as biases in justice institutions, social stigma, the psychological trauma of bringing claims, and lack of gender-sensitive procedures (Carrington et al., 2020).
Annually an estimated 243 million women and girls aged 15-49 years are subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months, a portion of these women form part of the 2.5 billion who are deprived of various forms of legal protections (Saleem et al., 2022). Worldwide 153 countries have laws which discriminate against women economically, including 18 countries where husbands can legally prevent their wives from working or moving without their permission more to that 1 in 3 women and girls will experience violence or abuse in their lifetime and are unable to access any form of justice (Gjecaj et al., 2023).
In ssub-Saharan Africa women and girls in this region have limited opportunities to access justice. The region’s unfortunate status can be attributed to numerous legal pluralisms orchestrated by the urge to keep statutory, customary and traditional justice mechanisms all in one basket. Nearly two thirds of the world’s 781 million illiterate adults are women, a proportion that has remained unchanged for two decades (Durojaye, Mirugi-Mukundi, & Adeniyi, 2020).
Justice is the foundation for building a better, fairer world. It is also a framework that protects societal progress and individual rights. The inability to access justice diminishes access to economic opportunity, reinforces structures that keep women poor, undermines human potential and inhibits inclusive growth (Lawson, Dubin, & Mwambene, 2019).
Legal practitioners and academics often conceptualize access to justice as ranging from access to formal justice mechanisms for dispute resolution such as the courts, to substantive conceptions of social justice to broader secondary categories of justice, including the ability to access health care, education and social services. It can also refer to informal justice, which is often the most common route of justice-seeking since it is affordable and most accessible to the poor and marginalized, though it does raise questions concerning its effectiveness and fairness, particularly for females.
Access to justice is guaranteed as a right under human rights treaties, such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also guaranteed under many domestic legislative documents, including in most African countries, despite its guarantee as a fundamental right, the chronically women often find it difficult to achieve justice. In many countries, access to justice is a “commodity” that is more easily obtained by the men and economically advantaged than the women are economically disadvantaged and face societal and cultural barriers they often lack the financial capacity, know-how and ability to access basic legal services (Durojaye, Mirugi-Mukundi, & Adeniyi, 2020). Access to justice is defined as the ability of people to seek and obtain a remedy through formal and informal institutions of justice for grievance and it goes beyond improving an individuals access to courts or legal representation.
Problem statement
Despite being a fundamental human right and a cornerstone of societal well-being, equal access to justice remains elusive globally, especially for marginalized groups such as women. The existing disparities in accessing justice are evident from statistics showing that a significant portion of the world’s population, including approximately 5.1 billion individuals, lacks access to justice mechanisms. Women, in particular, face multifaceted barriers ranging from social stigma to legal discrimination, inhibiting their ability to seek justice for various issues, including but not limited to violence, economic discrimination, and denial of basic rights. Furthermore, regional disparities, such as those seen in sub-Saharan Africa with its complex legal pluralism and high rates of illiteracy among women, further exacerbate the challenge of ensuring equitable access to justice. Despite legal frameworks guaranteeing access to justice as a fundamental right, the practical obstacles faced by women, including financial constraints and lack of legal knowledge, persist. Addressing these systemic barriers and ensuring genuine access to justice for all individuals, regardless of gender or socio-economic status, is imperative for upholding human rights, fostering societal progress, and promoting inclusive growth. It’s against this that this study intends to investigate into investigate level of education and womens access to justice.
Overall objective.
To investigate influence of level of education on woman’s access to justice.
Specific objective;
- To examine the influence of Achievement of tertiary education on women access to justice
- To establish the relationship between Achievement of secondary school education and women access to justice
- To assess the influence of Achievement of Primary school education on women access to justice.
Conceptual frame work
Level of education Women access to justice
Intervening variables
5.0 Methodology
This study will adopt a qualitative methodology of research in an attempt to analyze how education level influences access to justice among women. This methodology suits this research because it involves analyzing the behavioral patterns of specific groups of women from varying educational backgrounds with regards to access justice. It is a comparative study, where one group of the respondents is highly educated and another group is of low and moderate education background.
5.1 Study Design
Research design refers to the overall plan or strategy that a researcher develops to guide their study and answer their research questions or test their hypotheses (Leavy, 2022),. A case study design shall be adopted for this research. They provide an in depth study of a particular situation. The study also shall use qualitative and quantitative methodologies for data analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies shall be used in level of education on women access to justice. Quantitative research consists of those studies in which the data concerned can be analyzed in terms of numbers while qualitative describes events, persons and so forth scientifically without the use of numerical data. Quantitative research is based more directly on its original plans and its results are more readily analyzed and interpreted. Qualitative research is more open and responsive to its subject (Flick, 2022).
5.2 Study Site
Study site refers to the organization, agency or community in which the study will be conducted
5.3 Sampling Procedure
Sampling refers to the process of selecting the number of individuals for a study in such a way that the individuals represent the large group from which they were selected. In this research, our study populations are women who are vendors in Wandegeya market and female lecturers at the Makerere university school of law.
The study will consist of 200 respondents, market vendors and lecturers combined. The study will use both probability based and non-probability based sampling techniques. Women market vendors chosen for the study will be chosen using the proportionate stratified random sample probability technique.
5.4 Methods of data collection
This study will undertake structured interviews carried out using a questionnaire that will be administered both physically and online. The questionnaire shall be structured with close-ended questions to ensure consistency of responses. The questionnaire will set out the subject of the research which is how level of education influences access to justice. The interview schedule will contain some of the questions pre-determined as follows;
6.0 Data Analysis
A blend of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection will be used. Respondents opinions on their interaction with the justice system, affordability of legal fees, access to a lawyer, their socioeconomic and cultural behaviours, will be summarized in a quantitative data analysis technique by the use of descriptive statistics like frequencies and percentages.Key informant interviews qualitative data will be analyzed using Creswell’s(2003)five steps, themes will be found in the data, redundant information removed, themes will be classified into major categories, major categories clustered into sub-categories and sub-categories will be translated from their concrete meaning into the language of science.
7.0 Ethics
The researcher will get authorization letter from the Faculty of law MUK, before conducting any research. The researcher will seek respondents‟ consent before involving them in the research. This will include briefing the respondents about the research objectives and roles of the respondents and how they will be going to benefit from the research. By explaining to the respondents the objective of the study, the researcher will not force them to participate in any way but they are allowed individually to decide whether or not to participate in the study. The researcher will also assure the respondents about the degree of confidentiality in the information that will be gathered from them. Additionally, the names or identifications of the respondents will be kept anonymous by assignment of unique identifiers/codes on the questionnaires and information collected from them will be treated with utmost confidentiality. Moreover, the researcher will act honestly, fairly and respectfully to all other stakeholders that will be involved in this study. Not only that, the researcher will accurately attribute to the sources of information in an effort to celebrate the works of past scholars or researchers. This will ensure that no plagiarism will occur. Last but not least, the researcher will work according to generally acceptable norms of research in giving proper credit to the work of others by citing their sources appropriately.
References
Carrington, K., Guala, N., Puyol, M. V., & Sozzo, M. (2020). How women’s police stations empower women, widen access to justice and prevent gender violence. International journal for crime, justice and social democracy, 9(1), 42-67.
Durojaye, E., Mirugi-Mukundi, G., & Adeniyi, O. (2020). Legal empowerment as a tool for engendering access to justice in South Africa. International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 20(4), 224-244.
Fitz-Gibbon, K., & Pfitzner, N. (2021). Ensuring access to justice for women experiencing family violence beyond the pandemic. Alternative Law Journal, 46(1), 3-4.
Flick, U. (2022). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research design.
Gjecaj, E., Lawson, A., Traustadóttir, R., & Rice, J. G. (2023). ‘We Got Lucky with the Judge’: Access to Justice for Disabled Women in Iceland. Laws, 12(2), 21.
Lawson, D., Dubin, A., & Mwambene, L. (2019). Ensuring African women’s access to justice: engendering rights for poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.
Leavy, P. (2022). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford Publications.
Saleem, H. A. R., Khan, I. A., ud Din, S. J., & Irshad, S. (2022). WOMEN ACCESS TO JUSTICE IN PAKISTAN; EXTRAPOLATING ABUSES AND BARRIERS. Competitive Education Research Journal, 3(2), 104-119.
