In the context of human rights, identify a true statement about womens rights and gender equity.

Gend Soc. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 Oct 26.

Published in final edited form as:

PMCID: PMC2767117

NIHMSID: NIHMS136246

Abstract

Across the African continent, women’s rights have become integral to international declarations, regional treaties, national legislation, and grassroots activism. Yet there is little research on how African men have understood these shifts, and how African masculinities are implicated in such changes. Drawing on a year of ethnographic research in the Ugandan capital Kampala, this article investigates how ordinary men and women in Uganda understand women’s rights, and how their attitudes are tied to local conceptions of masculinity. I argue that a new configuration of gender relations is evident in urban Uganda—one that accommodates some aspects of women’s rights while retaining previous notions of innate male authority. This article, therefore, illustrates the complex and often contradictory engagements with human rights that occur in local contexts, and how such engagements are shaped by gender relations, including conceptions of masculinity.

Keywords: women’s rights, human rights, masculinity, Africa, Uganda

In the last two decades, notions of inalienable human rights have reshaped the political landscapes of countries throughout the developing world. The human rights paradigm has been mobilized to address a range of contemporary inequities, including the vagaries of neoliberal globalization, the excesses of authoritarian states, and the impact of new forms of cultural and religious fundamentalism. Women’s rights activists have been at the center of the revitalization of human rights, struggling to address gender inequity across cultures without lapsing into misguided essentializing. Through participatory, inclusive organizing, the global women’s movement has advanced an approach to human rights that moves beyond “the doomed duality of homogenizing universalism and paralyzing particularism” (Desai 1996, 116).

By forging multidirectional connections between North and South, the global and the local, women’s rights activists have demonstrated the utility of human rights in a wide range of contexts (Tripp 2006). The success of this movement is evident in new institutions, legal mechanisms, and global norms focused on gender equality, leading Kardam (2004) to suggest that a “global gender equality regime” has emerged. While transnational women’s organizing faces challenges on many fronts (Desai 1996, 2007; Yuval-Davis 2006), the global women’s movement has nonetheless transformed human rights discourse, making it central to struggles for equality and justice around the globe.

These changes are evident across the African continent, where the language of human rights has become integral to international declarations, regional treaties, national legislation, and grassroots activism. The institutionalization of women’s rights is a key aspect of these developments and an important facet of contemporary politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Many African constitutions explicitly recognize women’s rights, and in 2003 the African Union passed the far-reaching Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

However, given this new salience of women’s rights in Africa, there is surprisingly little research on how African men have understood these developments, and how African masculinities are implicated in such changes. Women’s rights discourses are no doubt affecting conceptions of masculinity in many African settings, but how and to what extent? Researchers are just beginning to address such questions by analyzing connections between masculinity and gender politics in a range of African contexts (Agadjanian 2002; Morrell 2001).

This article contributes to this emerging literature and specifies how ordinary men and women in Uganda understand women’s rights, and how their attitudes are tied to local conceptions of masculinity. I argue that a new configuration of gender relations is evident in urban Uganda—one that accommodates some aspects of women’s rights while retaining previous notions of innate male authority. The majority of men I interacted with in my research were receptive to greater women’s rights, so long as such changes did not undermine their ultimate authority over women, especially within the home. For such men, women’s rights should be limited in scope and not synonymous with equality between men and women. However, some women and a small number of men I encountered did link women’s rights to gender equality, and in the process they challenged entrenched notions of a masculinity rooted in male superiority. There was also a backlash to this new configuration because a minority of men I met were adamantly opposed to any notion of greater rights for women. This article, therefore, helps us understand how diverse engagements with human rights in local contexts are shaped by—and are shaping—gender relations, including notions of masculinity.

GENDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

This article uses masculinity as a lens for examining the connections between gender relations and human rights in an African context. I draw on Connell’s (1995) conceptualization of masculinity, especially her emphasis on how hegemonic masculinity reproduces gender hierarchies and inequalities. As Connell and Messerschmidt note, the practices that construct hegemonic masculinity should be understood as complex, dynamic, and potentially contradictory (2005, 852). Hegemonic masculinity, therefore, is not unitary or static but instead varies significantly across time and space (Morrell 2001), and at local, regional, and global levels (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).

This formulation of hegemonic masculinity as complex and multidimensional is central to my analysis of shifting gender relations in Uganda. Human rights discourse is refracting gender relations in new ways in Uganda, creating fault lines and tensions that destabilize prevailing notions of male authority and men’s “proper roles.” Hegemonic masculinity, as Connell and Messerschmidt argue, “provides a solution to these tensions, tending to stabilize patriarchal power or reconstitute it in new conditions” (2005, 853). They also note, however, that notions of hegemonic masculinity remain open to challenge if they fail to resolve such tensions and conflicts. As I argue below, the range responses to women’s rights in urban Uganda suggests that the established configuration of hegemonic masculinity is only partially able to resolve such tensions. Along side it, a different variant of hegemonic masculinity is coalescing which incorporates new discourses about women’s rights while retaining existing ideas of male authority.

The lens of masculinity, therefore, helps illuminate how gender matters to human rights in the Ugandan context. Importantly, human rights are not understood here as foreign to African societies, or as an imposition of “Western” values in a “non-Western” setting. As Amartya Sen (1997) has argued, the constituent components of modern notions of human rights can be found in many cultures, not just Western cultures. While human rights may have found their fullest articulation in the West, the issue of human rights addresses fundamental questions about the relationship of the individual to society, and “thus is one that has been raised across time and across cultures” (Lauren 2003, 12).

African cultures, which are frequently essentialized as tradition-bound, communal, and incompatible with individual rights, have engaged with these issues as well. Many pre-colonial African societies articulated clear visions of human dignity, freedom from oppression, as well as rules governing the just distribution of goods (Mamdani 1990; Mutua 2002). While some have suggested that such African notions of human dignity and justice are not synonymous with human rights (Donnelly 1982; Howard 1990), these arguments presuppose a restricted, and rather Eurocentric, understanding of legally-enforceable, individual human rights. Such a narrow definition obscures how many pre-colonial African societies espoused religious, moral, and cultural values that incorporated ideas of collective and individual rights—ideas that “can validly be considered the contextual equivalents of the modern concept of legal rights” (Ibhawoh 2004, 24).

With the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, member states formally recognized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1981, the OAU expanded its recognition of human rights by adopting the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which is unique in its inclusion of collective, or group, rights (Mutua 2002). While the African Charter does mandate that member states protect women’s rights, African women’s rights activists argued that the emphasis on community rights gave legitimacy to cultural practices which discriminated against women. In 2003, activists pressured the African Union (formally the OAU) to expand the African Charter by ratifying the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. The Protocol includes more explicit discussion of women’s rights as individuals rights, and establishes a regional forum for women to challenge rights violations.

As international human rights have become institutionalized at the regional level in Africa, there is a need to examine how notions of universal human rights are intertwined with existing ideas of freedoms, rights, and duties in specific cultural contexts. This requires conceptualizing culture not as a hermetically-sealed system of beliefs and values but as “hybrid and porous,” recognizing that “the pervasive struggles over cultural values within local communities are competitions over power” (Merry 2006, 9). Human rights, then, is best understood as a form of “cultural practice” (Preis 1996), with local actors appropriating the universal rights framework and “remaking human rights in the vernacular” (Merry 2006, 1).

This research in Uganda extends Merry’s notion of the vernacularization of human rights by emphasizing that local contexts are multifaceted, complex, and encompass many competing appropriations of human rights. The local, urban Ugandan context is far from homogenous and instead defined by divisions and conflicts over contested meanings of human rights. The emphasis on women’s rights in this article highlights the role gender relations play in these processes. In Uganda, and across the globe, women’s rights activists have advocated for an expanded notion of human rights that encompasses equality in civil, political, economic, and social rights (Bunch 1990; Oloka-Onyango and Tamale 1995).1 A focus on women’s rights reveals the conflicts, tensions, and contradictions regarding which aspects of rights are being emphasized, and by whom.

This article also examines the “internalized cultural schemas” that reinforce gender inequalities (Epstein 2007), and the focus on conceptions of masculinity underscores how ideas about “proper” male and female personhood influence local understandings of human rights. Importantly, such intersubjective aspects of gender relations operate not only at a “local” level but infuse gender discourses at national, regional and international levels as well. Through such dynamic, multidirectional interactions, abstract and universal notions of rights take on context-specific meanings and are transformed in the process (Tripp 2006).

THE URBAN UGANDAN CONTEXT

Research for this article was conducted in Bwaise, a low-income community in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Like other East African nations, Uganda faces challenges in education, poverty reduction, and health care. In the 2005 UNDP Human Development Report, Uganda ranked 155th out of 177 countries, placing it slightly lower than Kenya and higher than Tanzania and Rwanda. Since 1990, Uganda’s GDP has grown, but 38 percent of the population still lived in absolute poverty in 2004 (UNDP 2005). Men dominate better-paying occupations, with men twice as likely as women to be earning income through self-employment, and there are persistent gender gaps in literacy and education (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2006). Uganda also faces considerable public health challenges, and while the country is noted for success in reducing HIV prevalence, 6 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, with infection rates higher in urban areas and among women (Uganda Ministry of Health and ORC Macro 2006).

With 1.2 million inhabitants, Kampala is the only true city in largely-rural Uganda and, like many African cities, Kampala is a study in contrasts. There is a bustling city center and some elite residential neighborhoods on leafy hillsides. Yet most residents live in the congested valleys, with many in densely-populated areas like Bwaise.2 Located 5 kilometers north of the center of city, Bwaise covers slightly more than one square mile and is home to 47,000 people (Uganda Bureau of Statistic 2006). From the ramshackle housing to the crumbling storefronts and overflowing sewage canals, life in overcrowded Bwaise is often difficult. Yet similar living conditions can be found across Kampala, making Bwaise representative of what life is like for many residents.

Bwaise has a well-deserved reputation for raucous nightlife, but I found that day-to-day business was its main draw. Although formal wage labor was virtually non-existent in Bwaise, some men found semi-regular work in Bwaise’s auto-repair shops, metal workshops, butchers, tailors, and carpentry workshops. So Bwaise did provide men opportunities to earn money, even if the work was often strenuous, available only sporadically, and poorly paid. While men dominated the activity on Bwaise’s commercial streets, women were present as well. Some worked in pharmacies, office supply stores, or served food in restaurants or informal stalls. Off the main streets, other women were earning a little money washing clothes, or selling produce and charcoal while they tended to their non-paid work at home.

Despite the economic hardships faced by residents of Bwaise, masculinity remains strongly tied to the breadwinner identity. In Bwaise, there exists one dominant masculine ideal of being a provider, primarily embodied through responsible fatherhood (Author 2007). However, beyond this uncontested male provider ideal, there was much confusion and conflict over a set of contested masculine ideals related to work, male authority and male sexuality. This article focuses on one aspect of these contested ideals and examines how new discourses of gender equity and equality have reframed notions of male authority in novel and unprecedented ways.

Finally, it is important to note that Uganda is ethnically diverse, with over 30 different ethnic groups contained within its borders. The primary distinction is between Bantu-language groups in the south and Sudanic and Nilotic-language groups in the north and east. Kampala is located in the southern part of the country—in Buganda—the home of the Baganda people. The four million Baganda are the largest ethnic group in Uganda, and most residents of Kampala are Baganda. This article, therefore, focuses on the Baganda and Ganda culture while recognizing that the cultural fabric of Kampala is significantly more complex.

Women’s Rights in Uganda

In Uganda, discourses about gender relations are multiple, and current tensions over male authority and gender equality need to be understood in historical perspective. This includes in relation to Ganda political cosmologies, because gender equality is premised on a notion of a balance of power that does not easily map onto Ganda notions of politics and authority. This is not to suggest that notions of rights, liberties, and duties are foreign. In Luganda, the language of the Baganda, “human rights” is translated as eddembe ly’obwebange (personal rights) or eddembe ly’obuntu (rights of humanity). Eddembe itself can mean freedom, liberty, peace or simply leisure (Murphy 1972), and eddembe is used to describe various aspects of human rights, such as eddembe ly’okwogera, or freedom of speech.

Notions of eddembe were an important part of the the Kingdom of Buganda, which emerged in the fourteenth century and remained powerful until Uganda’s independence in 1962. Rights were accorded based on communal membership, family ties, and individual achievement. Although not human rights in the modern sense, they continue to shape understandings of rights among the Baganda today. Rights based on individual achievement, for example, allowed for men’s social mobility, and they have implications for attitudes toward women’s changing status in contemporary Uganda.

British colonialism introduced a new set of laws that operated alongside customary law until independence. Customary law took precedence in family matters, which often centered on issues related to women’s status, such as property ownership and the rights of widows (Tripp 2000). The early independence period was not favorable to women’s organizing , but this changed dramatically in 1986 when current president Yoweri Museveni came to power and his government considerably increased women’s political participation in government. Today, 28 percent of the seats in parliament are occupied by women, and many women hold elected positions at district and local levels.

In this way, the Museveni regime placed issues of gender equity on the national agenda and gave legitimacy to claims that women should share the same political rights as men. Such claims were buttressed by changes to the Constitution in 1995 that explicitly included additional rights for women. While the Constitution stresses a full range of women’s rights and emphasizes gender equality, the Museveni government has focused primarily on increasing women’s political participation, and thus promoted a rather narrow version of gender equity.

The Ugandan women’s movement, in contrast, has promoted a more far-reaching agenda emphasizing gender equality. Unlike the Museveni government’s emphasis on gender equity in the political realm, which retains previous ideas of gender difference, the gender equality advocated by the women’s movement poses a more direct challenge to ideas of male superiority and male authority. The women’s movement has pursed a wide range of issues, including women’s land ownership and changes in marriage laws (Ahikire 2003; Tamale 1999), and thereby advocated for an expansive conceptions of women’s rights rooted in gender equality.

Thus, there are three main discourses regarding masculinity and gender relations in Bwaise. Gender inequality promotes the notion that men and women are different and unequal, with men being innately superior and, thus, in positions of authority. Gender equity retains a notion that men and women are different but emphasizes that women should be afforded the same opportunities as men. Gender equality questions any innate male|female difference or hierarchy and is based on an expansive notion of universal human rights that challenges naturalized ideas of male superiority and female subordination.

METHOD

This article examines how gender relations are lived in the dynamic and diverse urban milieu that is Bwaise. Understanding life in this area requires prolonged emersion, and this article is grounded in intensive ethnographic fieldwork in Bwaise from October 2003 to October 2004. Much research involved unstructured time in the community talking with men and women in shops, bars, markets, on the streets, and in their homes. To understand the nature of work in the area, I spent five months as an apprentice carpenter in a carpentry workshop in Bwaise, working one to two full days a week. To gauge the impact of women’s rights activism, I volunteered for ten months with the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention (CEDOVIP), spending one to two days per week observing their activities. This local NGO used a community-based approach to prevent domestic violence in the greater Bwaise area and placed a strong emphasis on human rights (see Michau 2007).

My participant observation was complemented by additional qualitative research, including interviews and group discussions. In total, I conducted in-depth interviews with 50 men and 19 women. Interviews were one-and-a-half hours long on average and 11 informants were interviewed multiple times. Interviewees were selected to reflect the demographic diversity of Bwaise, and they were recruited with the assistance of a research assistant familiar with the area. The final non-probability sample captured Bwaise’s diversity but not in the exact proportions found in the actual population. Two thirds of the interviewees were between 18 and 40 years old, three quarters were Baganda, and the sample included approximately equal numbers of Catholics, Anglicans, Evangelicals/Pentecostals, and Muslims. Almost 60 percent of interviewees had some secondary school education, while 28 percent had only attended primary school. Nearly all of my informants were struggling financially, subsisting on less than 40 U.S. dollars a month, which was typical for residents of Bwaise and similar communities in Kampala.3

Intensive language training before and during my fieldwork allowed me to conduct interviews in Luganda, the lingua franca of Kampala. Interviewees were given the choice of Luganda or English, the national language, and the majority of the interviews conducted in Luganda with some assistance from a native Luganda speaker. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the Luganda transcripts were then translated into English.

The majority of the in-depth interviews were conducted in the last four months of my fieldwork, and all interviews used the same guide which included questions on: work and challenges living in Bwaise; notions of “ideal” men and women; attitudes toward gender equality; ideal and actual intimate relationships; attitudes toward polygyny, child rearing and family size; history of sexual behavior; and the affect of HIV/AIDS in their lives.

In addition to in-depth interviews, four group discussions were conducted, each with 8 to 12 participants, and they lasted one-and-a-half to two hours. Two groups were all male, one all female and one mixed male and female. Each group was composed of residents from a different geographic region of Bwaise, and a local leader from the region facilitated recruitment. Like the in-depth interviews, participants represented a cross section of the adult Bwaise population. Group discussions were led by myself and/or the local leader and used a discussion guide very similar to the in-depth interviews, but without questions on sexual behavior.

After fieldwork was completed, all fieldnotes and transcripts were entered into Atlas.ti, a standard program for qualitative data analysis. The documents were read in chronological order, one set of codes was generated, and then documents were reread and coded. Codes were organized into four broad subject areas: local conceptions of masculinity and femininity; work; sexuality; and gender relations. For each subject, I looked for similarities and differences across all the fieldnotes and transcripts, and I identified significant themes. This article focuses on one central theme regarding different attitudes toward women’s rights and gender equality. While my analysis is grounded in my participant observation, all the quotes used below are from in-depth interviews or group discussions.

MASCULINITIES AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN BWAISE

The following sections examine how current discourses of gender difference and equality are tied to local conceptions of masculinity in Bwaise. I categorize a range of ways men and women respond to these discourses, from the reactionary (gender inequality) to the mainstream (gender equity) to the transgressive (gender equality).4 Each of these responses refracts the prevailing hegemonic masculine ideal of being a provider and established notions of male authority in different ways. Reactionary responses reflect an established hegemonic masculinity and are premised on maintaining patriarchal power relations that frame men’s power over women as natural and inevitable. Mainstream responses seek to reconcile men’s “proper” role as the primary family provider and exclusive authority in the home with some aspects of women’s rights. In this way, mainstream responses are not simply complicit with reactionary responses (Connell 1995, 79) but instead represent an emergent hegemonic masculinity that is still coalescing. Transgressive responses, in contrast, challenge hegemonic masculinities—established and emergent—by being receptive to gender equality and reformulated ideas of men’s roles and male authority. The following sections focus primarily, but not exclusively, on how men understand these shifting gender discourses. The intention is not to reduce an analysis of masculinity to an examination of men’s lives but instead to draw on men’s perspectives to illuminate tensions between masculinity, women’s rights, and gender equality in Bwaise.

Reactionary Voices: In Defense of Male Superiority

Some men I met in Bwaise were hostile to the idea that men and women were equals. For some men, male physical and intellectual superiority was obvious and the conventional division of labor was a “natural” outgrowth of such differences. Such understandings were often grounded in obutonde (nature) as Henry, a hardware shop manager, explained:

This is natural, they are not equal, unless you want to change obutonde [nature]. They are influenced by nature, a woman cannot roof a house, she would require help from the man. The culture naturally does not allow such a thing to happen, especially here in Buganda.

Some men had a slightly softer edge to their patronizing attitude toward women. Salim, a well-respected butcher in Bwaise, saw men and women as complementing each other:

They are not equal. A man is higher, because he is the one who goes out to bring the woman to his home. The man also is the major provider in the home. The relatives and in-laws have to look to the man for any requirements. But this does not mean that the man is too superior, however, because they complement each other.

Other men echoed Salim’s emphasis on male superiority being rooted in what they saw as men’s long-standing roles as providers and leaders. As one man bluntly put it, “here in Buganda they are not equal. Women do not control men, men control women. It does not change.”

Discourses of gender equity and equality challenge such entrenched ideas of male superiority and often elicited the deep sense of disempowerment and victimization many men felt. The following excerpt from a discussion with a group of men makes this clear:

Man 1: Women and men are not equal.

Man 2: A man should have been higher than the woman but now women are higher.

Man 3: Now with equality, women will get to the same level as us because of the changing situation, but men are still higher.

Man 4: On the government’s side, women and men are equal. When the women have money, women and men are equal.

Moderator: Do you think men and women should be treated equally?

Man 1: They should both have been treated equally but the government has sided so much with the women.

Man 2: We men are so hurt.

Man 3: We should also advocate for our rights just as the women did…We are not equal, come what may we shall never be equal.

For these men, government programs advocating gender equity had gone too far and infringed on men’s natural authority over women.

It was not just men who found shifting discourses on gender relations problematic. Some women were emphatic that men should have higher social status compared to women. “Men have more power and authority,” said one woman, “and it should not change. They take on a lot of responsibility in the family, so they should have more power.” Yet many of these women were also critical of men for abusing their power and dismissed suggestions that women’s rights were now recognized and protected. As one woman put it, “Men were given ekitiibwa [power, authority, or respect] by God, but they misuse it. A man can give any instruction and the women must follow it. A man’s strength is greater than a woman’s.”

In Bwaise, then, there were clearly elements of a backlash against women’s rights and more egalitarian gender relations. Many reactionary men placed the blame on the government, accusing the Museveni regime of favoring women over men. For such men, there was no distinguishing between gender equity and equality—both were problematic and threatened their already tenuous sense of authority.

The Wide Middle Ground: Negotiating Women’s Rights and Men’s Authority

Not all men in Bwaise were so reactionary. Some acknowledged, albeit grudgingly, that some change was beneficial. Gender equity discourses had shaped the attitudes of these men, and most were trying to reconcile gender equity with ideas of innate male authority. As one man said:

Men should have a special status according to culture. This status is inherited from our grandfathers and our fathers. But if it is to do with life, we should all be treated equally. For example, we are all entitled to medical treatment, whether a man or a woman…[But] I would be unhappy if women are given equal status to men.

Such men saw women and men as having different roles, and women fundamentally lower in status, but they recognized certain shared rights and the benefits of working collaboratively.

One step further along the gender difference-gender equality spectrum were men who saw women gaining access to education and jobs as a necessary part of development. However, even these men were leery of gender equality, especially regarding property ownership and men’s authority in the home. Wilfred, for example, volunteered for an international NGO and had been exposed to ideas of gender equality through various seminars and trainings. When asked if men and women were equal, Wilfred wanted to balance women’s rights with his notion of male authority:

Biologically they are not equal, but socially they are equal because they even do the same type of work. There never used to be women doctors or women engineers but now there are many. Regarding the rate of world development, it is good because it brings development…[But] a man should have control over property.

Author: But in the home men and women are equal?

Wilfred: They are not equal, the man is higher, but the reality is that it is possible to find a woman who is higher if she has more money than the man. The woman might rule over the man [okulinnya ku musajja – literally to climb on or ascend over the man]…These days women have started to marry men [okuwasa abasajja5].

Coming to terms with a world in which women now marry men and women are doctors whose daughters may inherit their land was disorienting for many men.

Like some men, many women in Bwaise connected development and progress with women being treated fairly. Nearly all those I spoke with, however, were quick to insist that women were in no way treated the same as men today. A few women were especially pessimistic about the future and feared a backlash against gender equity. As one woman said, “If women became equal to men there will be violence against women by men because men will not allow women to command them as they now do.” An older, 59-year-old woman was more bold and adamant that women deserved to be prioritized now, saying, “It’s the women’s time now to gain, so women should be put first at every opportunity.”

Even men who had been exposed to ideas such as “gender” in workshops, and were open to aspects of gender equity, often found it difficult to reconcile ideas of gender equality with their own notions of masculinity. Samuel, for example, was 34 and had a long history of working with NGOs in Bwaise. A sharp man with some post-secondary school education, he was adept at building connections with organizations, and his very modest fortunes had risen and fallen with the vagaries of development funding in the area. Recently, times had been tough and grants for his small community-based organization had run out, and his income came from managing a small shop.

Fluent in the language of development, Samuel participated in many seminars on gender and development and saw himself as much more educated on these issues than his male peers. Yet Samuel remained ambivalent about gender equality, acknowledging fluency in gender issues was a mark of status, yet apprehensive of advocating something that could further undermine his tenuous sense of manhood:

Personally, I see men and women as equal in some aspects. But in some, I still say one is supreme over the other. Like a family, as a unit, they are equal because they are both leaders. But then, a man is in most cases he is more equal because he is the head of the family. Any given society there has to be a head. And when a head happens to be a man, of course a man has to be a bit superior…But [men in Bwaise] have different views. Like there is a saying among men that “[a woman’s mental] capacity it's always low no matter how educated she is, no matter how rich she is, no matter how old she is.” But in fact there are cases, they are wrong is what I'm saying. There are cases where you find a lady, although they are rare they are there, where you find a woman has high reasoning capacity and really she has superior experience of a man, the cases are there. But most men say, oh ladies they are always inferior. In the community they don't view things the way I do.

While Samuel saw himself as significantly more enlightened than other men regarding gender relations, he remained uncomfortable with discourses of gender equality. Gender equity was less problematic because it allowed him to balance ideas of gender fairness with greater male authority. It also helped him to acknowledge intelligent, successful and powerful women without completely relinquishing male authority.

Samuel was correct to say that his views on gender relations were not representative of all men in Bwaise. As discussed above, there were men, and some women, who voiced reactionary positions on issues of gender equity, and who saw women as inferior to men. Yet in other ways Samuel did represent the new “mainstream.” Like Samuel, many men in Bwaise tried to negotiate a balance between greater women’s rights and continued male authority. All men I encountered in Bwaise had to orient themselves in relation to discourses of gender equity and equality, and most were attempting to stake out a moderate position that supported some aspects of women’s empowerment while retaining ideas of male authority. Most, but not all, of the women I met were willing to go further, stressing the value of gender equality and implicitly challenging notions of innate male authority.

Conflicts over gender equality in Bwaise, then, are not simply about the gendered division of labor, the role of women in politics, or women’s property rights. There is more at stake, namely, the changing nature of male authority. Conceptions of masculinity in Uganda have long been rooted in ideas of natural male superiority that conferred male authority over women and children (Obbo 1980; Roscoe 1911). While men’s authority over other men has had achieved dimensions, men’s authority over women has been largely ascribed. Yet in urban Uganda, where the male role of provider is the central masculine ideal, chronic poverty makes it difficult to live up to such an ideal, which leaves the foundation of male authority less certain. New discourses of gender equity and equality further challenge the ascribed dimensions of male authority, leaving men insecure in uncertain times. Given this situation, a vociferous backlash against gender equality is hardly surprising. What is surprising is that most men I encountered held more moderate views like those of Samuel, and they attempted to balance gender equity and male authority.

Beyond Gender Equity: Testing the Boundaries of Masculinity in Bwaise

In Bwaise I did encounter a few, mostly young men who wanted to explore more transgressive gender relations that accommodated ideas of gender equality. One such young man was Patrick, a 22 year old who volunteered with a local NGO working in the Bwaise area. I first met Patrick on a cloudless and particularly hot afternoon to learn more about his volunteer work for the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention. Although paid only twenty dollars a month, which did not cover his monthly expenses, Patrick was an enthusiastic advocate for women’s rights, as I saw first hand when I accompanied him during his community outreach activities.

On this afternoon, Patrick arrived in a plaid shirt and dress shoes, and he sported a black cap that protected him from the sun and made him appear a bit more fashionable. Patrick wanted to venture into the interior of Bwaise for what the organization called a door-to-door sensitization, so we meandered along the dusty paths, past latrines and dead trees, and eventually stopped at a small shack fashioned from handmade bricks. A woman in her late twenties was in front, naked from the waist up to get some relief from the heat. When we approached, she wrapped a cloth around her torso and spread out a mat for us to sit on.

Patrick began asking her if she was aware of any problems with domestic violence in the area. As we would hear several times this day, the woman did know of cases and proceeded to tell us about a woman who recently took her children and left an abusive husband. A Local Council official became involved but was bribed by the man to drop the case, and the man eventually moved away from the area. Patrick listened attentively, took careful notes, and then decided it was time to move on.

Next, Patrick found a group of two men and one woman, all in their late 30s or early 40s. The group was not welcoming and did not ask us to sit, but Patrick was undeterred. He took his usual approach, asking if they knew what domestic violence meant and if there were any such problems in the area. In response, one of the men shifted the conversation, saying that when women earn money and they don’t tell men it leads to domestic violence. Also, if a man does not make much money, his children will start to hate him. The man was critical of a local organization providing women legal assistance, saying it favors women and causes problems for men. Patrick tried to talk about alternatives to violence but the men were dismissive, and we eventually admitted defeat.

We would speak with several groups of women that afternoon and many said they personally experienced problems with domestic violence and were eager to get help. However, our most awkward stop came when we stumbled upon a group of ten men and women all sprawled across the concrete veranda of a dilapidated house. The group clearly had little to do and was content just staring blankly at the garbage-strewn courtyard across from their house. One man in his late 20s stood out as potential trouble. With thick dreadlocks, a basketball jersey, cut-off jean shorts and thick silver chains, this young man was working hard to project an air of edgy urban cool. We again failed to get an invitation to sit down but Patrick was brave enough to ask this tough audience about domestic violence. One young man immediately got up and left, and then the other men began complaining about not having any work. Some of the women chimed in, saying unemployment leads to alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Another woman commented that men go off and get girlfriends and new wives, and when they return home there is trouble. With this, the dreadlocked man had heard enough and walked away, making nasty comments about me as he left. Patrick pushed on a bit, stressing how couples could help avoid violence if they communicated openly and listened to each other. However, he had lost this group’s attention and decided it was time to cut his losses.

After finishing the activity, I asked Patrick if he found the work difficult, and he admitted it was hard. The men can be stubborn, he complained, and sometimes even the women failed to take him seriously because he was still young. However, he felt the work was important and was making an impact in the community, at least for women looking for support or information. Getting men to change their attitudes about domestic violence, he conceded, was more difficult.

Such experiences did little to dampen Patrick’s volunteer zeal, and he remained dedicated to helping women and trying to change the attitudes of his male peers. From many conversations with Patrick, I learned he distanced himself from other men in Bwaise and their views on what it meant to be a “real” man. “A real man,” Patrick told me, “according to them, they say a real man must make a woman cry during sex, that’s what they say. A real man must be authoritative at home. A real man must have more than one wife. Very many children.”

However, it was around issues of gender equality that Patrick’s views truly differed from his male peers. When asked if he thought men and women were equal he replied:

From my own perspective, they are equal. Men and women are equal. But when it comes to responsibilities that’s where the difference comes in. The gender roles. I mean the way the society sees a man there is some work that is assigned for a man, designed for only a man, and should be done by the man. And when they see a woman doing the same work they look at it as that woman is just halfway a man. Kyakulasajja [half-man]. That she looks like a man…But otherwise women and men are supposed to be the same. Especially when it comes to rights. Yeah. They should be the same…Because for instance, there are times when [my wife] used to fall sick and I had to do the mopping, I had to do the cooking. But nothing changed on my body. And most people say that when you are doing a woman’s job it’s like your penis is going to fall off, and you’re going to lose your manhood. But nothing changes.

By suggesting it’s acceptable for men to cook and clean, Patrick placed himself at one end of the spectrum of gender difference and equality, which was no doubt a lonely place for a young man in Bwaise. However, while Patrick obviously saw himself as different from other men in Bwaise, he was confident his ideas about masculinity and gender relations were legitimate. The organizations he worked with shaped and supported such ideas, and he had found a few supportive men in Bwaise as well. While the masculine ideal Patrick was exploring was marginal in Bwaise, it was not illegitimate, and in addition it carried with it the potential to transform more established configurations of masculinity, gender difference, and male authority.

REPRODUCING AND CHALLENGING MALE AUTHORITY

In Bwaise, a new “mainstream” notion of the “ideal” male provider has emerged which incorporates some ideas of gender equity, and women working outside the home, but retains aspects of male authority, especially within the home. Reactionary positions are also evident that promote male superiority and female subordination, and that are adamantly opposed to women working. Finally, there are faint hints of a new, more transgressive gender politics that incorporate some ideas of gender equality. This transgressive position challenges notions of naturalized male superiority and emphasizes collective decision making over exclusive male authority in the home. Overall, of the 50 men I interviewed in my sample, 48 percent fell within the mainstream group, 34 percent were reactionary, and 18 percent could be considered transgressive. The 19 women I interviewed were more likely to express favorable views about gender equality, with 26 percent mainstream, 26 percent reactionary, and 48 percent who could be considered transgressive.

These shifts suggest that gender equity has become institutionalized, but in a way that retains many conventional notions of male privilege and authority. Relatively new ideas of women’s rights have been incorporated into gender relations in Bwaise, but in the process they have been adapted and transformed to fit with existing conceptions of masculinity. While the Ugandan women’s movement has promoted an expansive notion of women’s rights based on gender equality, many men in Bwaise frame such rights more narrowly so they do not threaten important aspects of male authority.

Mills and Ssewakiryanga (2002) reach a similar conclusion from their research in 1995 among middle-class faculty and students at Makerere University in Kampala. They found much ambivalence about women’s rights and gender equality among those they interviewed. Most recognized some value in reshaped gender relations, but such changes had to be contained within prevailing conceptions of masculinity, male authority, and male power. The fact that these findings among upper-class and elite Ugandans mirror much of what I saw in Bwaise speaks to the wide-ranging shifts in gender relations in urban Uganda.

Beyond the Ugandan context, Ampofo and Boateng (2007) discuss how young Ghanaian boys exhibit a range of attitudes regarding masculinity, and Ampofo (2004) examines how Ghanaian couples can be categorized in relation to hegemonic and alternative masculinities. In South Africa, Morrell (2001) has also carefully charted the various ways men have responded to gender change. He groups responses into three broad categories: reactive or defense, accommodating, and responsive or progressive (2001, 26), which closely reflect the distinctions I make here. For example, Morrell notes that accommodating men in South Africa are attempting to forge a middle ground that explores new ideologies of gender relations while retaining male authority over women. He also describes progressive men, much like Patrick, who are engaged in challenging violent masculinities, especially with regard to domestic violence.

In Uganda and South Africa, therefore, there is strong evidence for a diversity of responses to shifting gender relations, and support for the argument that “hegemonic masculinity has shifted and continues to shift” (Morrell 2001, 33). In both contexts, strong state support for women’s rights, active local and international women’s groups, and chronic male underemployment have destabilized conventional notions of masculinity, especially those tied to male authority.

Yet such speculation about shifts in masculinity and gender equality in Uganda must be tempered by an examination of power relations among the Baganda. Karlstrom’s (1996) analysis of how the Baganda imagine “democracy” is helpful in this regard. Based on research in the early 1990s among rural Baganda, Karlstrom argues that Western notions of democracy have been “selectively assimilated to an existing political cosmology” rooted in a hierarchical system of clans and kingship (1996, 485). Eddembe ly’obuntu (democracy and also human rights), Karlstrom suggests, is not synonymous with a Western notion of intrinsic individual rights and freedoms. It indexes instead “an understanding of freedom as guaranteed by a rightly ordered polity, a society where both rulers and subjects conform to standards of civility which are inseparably ethical and political” (1996, 490).

Karlstrom argues that this understanding of rights reflects a hierarchical model of sociopolitical power in which a sole ruler, in this case a king, is at the apex. The system mandates allegiance of subordinates to superiors, and while justice and equality (obwenkanya) are salient in Buganda, the meaning is more restricted and does not imply an “ontological equality of persons” (Karlstrom 1996, 489).

As Karlstrom notes, the emphasis on the singularity of leadership at the apex of the social hierarchy is echoed at other levels of society, and the implications of this model of power for gender equity and equality are significant. I suggest that gender equality, which implies men and women sharing power and cooperating to “lead” a family together is fundamentally incompatible with the Ganda emphasis on the singularity of power. Gender equity, which implies equal opportunity for women to gain power, is more compatible because it retains the notion of a single person at the head of any given level of society. In addition, the Ganda emphasis on individual achievement and social mobility, although conventionally related to men, may make certain aspects of advancing women’s status through gender equity more culturally acceptable.

It was perhaps not surprisingly, then, that Karlstrom found widespread enthusiasm among men and women about the advancement of women under the “pro-women” Museveni government. This enthusiasm, however, did not breach the domestic sphere because his informants, regardless of gender, “also insisted that the political advancement of women should not and would not change the established relations of domestic hierarchy between husbands and wives” (1996, 492). Karlstrom’s research on democracy, therefore, does resonate with some of what I observed in Bwaise because while most men and women supported aspects of gender equity and women’s political empowerment, gender equality was much less palatable. This is evident, for example, in Wilfred’s concerns about women ruling, or “climbing” over men, and Gilbert’s opinion that in “any given society there has to be a head.”

Yet, in Bwaise I also encountered some women, and a few men, who were enthusiastic supporters of gender equality, an idea seemingly at odds with more established notions of the singularity of power. It is possible that nearly twenty years of government-supported women’s empowerment and an active, independent women’s movement have provided space for newer notions of gender equality. In addition, the urban environment may matter here in important ways, further eroding the ideas of “proper” social relations based on clan and kingship.

Nonetheless, Karlstrom’s work highlights the importance of situating the impact of new human rights discourses within the local cultural context where Ganda cosmologies remain salient. Yet we also need to remain attentive to how more contemporary phenomena—such as the politics of the late-Museveni regime, and the growing role of local and international NGOs—also shape the ways human rights are understood.

CONCLUSION: WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND AFRICAN MASCULINITIES

This discussion of women’s rights in urban Uganda makes clear the importance of examining human rights in cultural context in order to grasp the complex ways such ideas become meaningful in a particular place. As Preis argues, understanding human rights requires a dynamic conception of culture that captures “the various ways in which human rights give meaning to, and are attributed with meaning in, the on-going life experiences and dilemmas of men and women” (1996, 290). This approach to human rights as “cultural practice” provides a way to examine the dynamic interplay between culture and human rights, recognizing that local cultures are diverse, dynamic, and fraught with power relations. These processes are evident in Uganda where universal human rights is less a strict set of principles than a pliant platform from which different actors pursue divergent, often conflicting agendas.

Local cultures, therefore, are both potential barriers to and resources for social change, as Merry (2006) notes in her study of global efforts to combat violence against women. She demonstrates that local contexts can be open to change, emphasizing the key role activists play as intermediaries between global rights discourses and local cultures. While these processes are central to human rights as cultural practice, Merry does not fully specify the complexity of local cultures. When she does examine the reception of rights discourse in local contexts, she focuses exclusively on women who are victims of abuse and rights violations.

My research has examined local responses to human rights more broadly, and it provides insight into the ways men also come to understand rights discourses. This article, therefore, extends Merry’s analysis by showing the multiple, conflicting processes at work in the local context as human rights are remade in the vernacular. It illustrates the complex and often contradictory engagements with human rights in a given setting, and the implications such engagements have for gendered subjectivities.

The emphasis on women’s rights in this article brings these differing engagements with human rights into full relief—whether they are the Museveni government’s promotion of gender equity, or the Ugandan women’s movement more encompassing conception of women’s rights rooted in gender equality. Yet this article has demonstrated that such a broad conception of women’s rights is contested by many residents of Bwaise, especially men. Women’s political participation has been successfully framed in a way that most Ugandans find palatable, however, for many men, and some women, men’s authority within the home remains uncontestable. Attempts to reconfigure gendered power relations within the domestic sphere, such as changing marriage laws or the division of labor within the home, are seen as excessive.

The emphasis on conceptions of masculinity in this article helps reveal how cultural schemas about normative gender relations constrain discourses on human rights. Local conceptions of masculinity are a powerful force that help naturalize a more limited interpretation of women’s rights. These cultural schemas legitimize male dominance and act as a limiting factor on more expansive ideas of women’s rights. That is not to say such conceptions of masculinity are monolithic and static, as this paper clearly demonstrates. They are more complex and fluid than might be expected, with room for multiple understandings of male authority and power.

This article illustrates that normative gender discourses can be resisted and, perhaps, transformed. In Bwaise, an emerging hegemonic masculinity is evident that draws on a narrow conception of women’s rights premised on gender equity. Yet a space has opened for other conceptions of masculinity that are compatible with a more expansive definition of women’s rights based in gender equality. This research, therefore, indicates the importance of remaining attentive to local contexts in all their complexity, including the diverse notions of masculinities that both challenge and support the legitimacy of women’s rights.

While the Ugandan women’s movement has had success in promoting an expanded notion of human rights, they have also faced significant obstacles in advancing greater sexual rights for women, including women’s sexual autonomy and sexual health. Given the devastation AIDS has wrought in Uganda, one would think the AIDS epidemic would have drawn attention to the importance of sexual rights. Yet, on the whole, few AIDS prevention efforts in Uganda have seriously incorporated a gender perspective, and there is no clear government policy integrating women’s rights and AIDS prevention. With the “feminization” of AIDS in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa, it is crucial to gain a better understanding of how gender relations are linked to HIV transmission. In the age of AIDS, a broad and encompassing conceptualization of women’s rights as human rights is vital not only to the lives of Ugandan women, but their male partners as well.

Footnotes

1This is not to suggest that there is a univocal discourse about women and feminism in Africa. There are in fact significant tensions regarding how African feminism should be conceived (Beoku-Betts and Njambi discuss 2005), including how best to formulate a “humanistic feminism” (Steady 1987) as well as the utility of gender as a lens for examining African societies (Oyewumi 1997).

2Pseudonyms are used for people and organizations here, except the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention. Place names, including Bwaise, have not been changed, although care has been taken to avoid including information that could reveal an individual’s identity.

3I did not expect or find Bantu ethnic variation to be strongly associated with differing attitudes toward women’s rights. Ethnicity may be more important when comparing Bantu and non-Bantu groups, but my sample included only 1 non-Bantu respondent. Class differences may also be important, especially regarding elite men and women, but very few elite Ugandans live in Bwaise and none was included in my sample.

4Kimmel (1987) presents a similar categorization in his analysis of American men’s antifeminist, masculinist and profeminist responses to feminism. I do not use his classification because I examine responses to both feminist notions of gender equality as well as government-promoted ideas of gender equity that can not accurately be described as feminist. In addition, Kimmel’s typology is based on a sharply gendered public/private sphere distinction which does not easily map onto the Ugandan context where women’s agricultural labor, trading activities, and forms of local organizing blur distinctions between public and domestic activities (Musisi 2005; Tripp 1998).

5Wilfred used the verb okuwasa (to marry), a transitive verb used to describe a man marrying a woman. Okufumbirwa (to be married) is the intransitive verb used to describe a woman being married to a man. Okufumbirwa would only be used to describe a man being married to a woman in a disparaging way (Murphy 1972). So Wilfred’s use of okuwasa here implies women having a type of power conventionally reserved for men.

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