Abstract

Gender inequalities have persisted in Uganda’s primary education regardless of specific interventions put in place to eliminate them. These include the implementation of Universal Primary Education in 1997. Research was carried out to understand the reasons for the persistence of these inequalities. This article highlights the nature of the various intersections that shape the background of direct and de facto discrimination upon which gender inequality thrives in a context of HIV/AIDS. Addressed are significant social dimensions with respect to rural education: class/wealth, age/generation and health/status of AIDS-affliction. We argue that HIV/AIDS affects all other categories thereby adding impressively to the magnitude and complexity of inequalities. Measures aimed at achieving gender equality in such a context should therefore not only broadly target girls or boys as a single category or gender dimension, but rather include specific interventions for those dimensions that cause subordination in various ways.