Controlling Consumption: The Illusiveness and Pervasiveness of Gender Stratifications in the Ugandan Marketplace

In Uganda, as women become more educated and employed, and as laws are enacted to protect their rights, male economic power might be expected to erode. Ideologies, however, continue to uphold the gender hierarchies in this traditional patriarchal society. In rural communities, where traditional tribal laws are still practiced, women continue to be treated like property, traded for a bride-price as soon as they can bear children, or, if a widow, being inherited by her husband’s family and forced to marry his male relative should she have no male children to provide for her. Women continue to submit to these laws for fear that they will be outcasts of society. The local model of domestic virtue continues to restrict a woman’s role in the economy even in urban areas (Kyomuhendo and McIntosh (2006). Our research investigated the way such gender restrictions are perpetuated through family consumption decisions. We frame our analysis using two of Lukes (2005) faces of power: decisions and preferences. In rural Uganda, a woman is limited in her ability to keep her own money or to get to the shops to buy needed goods. If she works with her husband, the money goes directly to him. Any money she earns through selling small amounts of produce can easily be taken by her husband who, culturally, is allowed to beat her. She becomes trapped at home, burdened with the responsibility of childcare, kept from travelling the miles between her homestead and the trading center by cultural beliefs that make female mobility on a motorcycle immoral. Although norms are less openly restrictive in urban areas, the other face of power – power over preferences – does exist in judgments of appropriate versus inappropriate consumption, with pejorative terms applied to women who challenge gender norms for consumption.