If a woman from Uganda meets a man she knows on Oxford Street, she would be expected to get on her knees to greet him. Kneeling in deference to men and older people is a common practice for many African ethnic groups; anything less and the woman risks being considered poorly brought up, elitist and disrespectful.

So when Winnie Byanyima, the Ugandan-born executive director of Oxfam International, took to Twitter to question the practice, she sparked a fierce debate about the relationship between women’s rights and traditional culture.

The London-based former diplomat was back in Uganda when a neighbour insisted on kneeling to greet her. Byanyima, tweeting a picture of the smiling young woman, wrote: “Neighbour Leonarda kneels down to greet me. I told her not to kneel but she insists that a young woman must show respect while kneeling to greet older people and men. I don’t agree. Boys don’t kneel. How do we stop this humiliating practice?”

She was flooded with replies defending the practice as being rooted in culture and religion. Many Ugandans consider themselves progressive and say they believe in women’s rights but abhor any suggestion of full equality. “I support those who fight gender violence and who empower women but I don’t support those who make them think they are equal to men. It’s biblical,” tweeted Paddy Garille.

Human rights are widely accepted to be indivisible and interdependent, and fighting for one should mean fighting for all. However, in Africa and Asia, NGOs have had to make concessions over which rights to push for, and how. Most have chosen to focus on tangible services, rather than invest in changing the psyche of society. They hope a change in attitudes will naturally follow an improvement in rights, but a recent study of women in India who work outside the home, showed the flaws in this approach. Earning was expected to empower and protect these women, but the study showed them to be at increased risk of violence from their partners.

Tina Musuya, executive director of the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention in Uganda, describes NGO and government commitment to women’s rights in Africa as “a pendulum”. In Uganda in particular, there is an awareness of laws and policies to protect women’s rights, but also an obsession with controlling women’s bodies. The government withdrew contraception and safe abortion guidelines after an outcry from religious leaders, and a law guaranteeing equal rights in marriage and divorce has been shelved for decades for fear it will destabilise families.

The murder of women goes unpunished. Between last May and September, more than 20 women around the capital Kampala were killed but there have been no arrests or charges. Even female civil servants’ clothing is policed, with a ban on “short dresses”. “They are comfortable talking about sexual reproductive health services but not rights. We are seeing more repressive laws against women’s dress and parliament has refused to recognise marital rape as a ground for divorce,” Musuya said.

Nor has international support for women’s rights been consistent. Four years ago Uganda passed two heavily criticised laws, one the notorious anti-homosexuality act, the other an anti-pornography act which is routinely used against women deemed “indecent”. After major donors such as the UK and US threatened to cut aid over the anti-gay law, it was quickly declared unconstitutional. But the appeal against the anti-pornography law is still pending.

While kneeling is not the cause of these rights violations, to Musuya it perpetuates bigger problems. “Kneeling sustains inequalities as it is about power,” she says. “If it means nothing, all genders should kneel for each other.”

Still, the line between harmful culture and valuable practices is not clear for everyone. Ugandan law professor Sylvia Tamale campaigns for the preservation of positive aspects of African culture. “As a feminist, I have learnt that treading the thin line between oppression and empowerment can be tricky and judging ‘innocuous’ cultural practices falls in this category,” she says. “Kneeling symbolises deference. It is no different from various representations of respect that we find around the world, including bowing or removing a hat before greeting an elder.”

But Byanyima stands by her objection to a practice that she says lies on a spectrum cultural traditions, applied only to women, to make their lesser status in a patriarchal world clear. “Curtsying, kneeling, foot binding, genital cutting, dowry are all cultural practices that subordinate women. Some are more harmful than others, all have no place in an equal world.”