Under Attack

When I was 13 years old, my brother slapped me hard across the face. I was washing dishes in the kitchen, which used to be a hangout spot for everybody. Like many Ugandan households, it was home to a diverse collection of people. I lived with my three sisters, and cousins and other relatives stayed with us at different times. My half-brother was a late- comer, having arrived in our family after spending most of his early years with his mother. When he hit me, I remember bursting into tears and leaving the kitchen, too startled to hit him back. I cannot recall what the spat was about, and we now share a close friendship.

My sisters and I often fought when we were growing up – for the TV remote, to ride shotgun, and even for sport. After slapping me, he was spanked for a crime we’d been getting away with – apparently, he was not allowed the privilege of sibling rivalry. What stuck with me was the reason for his punishment: During the firm disciplining, my father asked him repeatedly what he had been doing in the kitchen in the first place.

Growing up in a predominantly female household and then attending an all-girls boarding secondary school, did not prepare me for “real life.” For a long time, the distinction society makes between men and women was not obvious to me. I had seen girls play football, excel in class, and take up leadership positions.

I grew up in the late 1990’s and early 2000s, when mainstream media were filled with stories of empowered women. The tough-as-nails Justice Julia Sebutinde, who was recently appointed to the International Court of Justice, was leading a highly publicised probe into corruption scandals, which led to various changes in public offices in Uganda. She was described as the petite fiery judge. It was said she could make grown men shake in their trousers. She made many shed tears. We also had the first female vice president in Africa, Dr Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, for nine years. We had this female Member of Parliament, Hon Miria Matembe, who proposed that rapists be castrated. It raised hell in Uganda’s public! Many other women were starting to rise to the top in different spheres.

Still, I was hoodwinked to believe that men were superior. Men were the “heads of the family,” the billionaires, the “natural” leaders. This story is sold in mainstream media, in movies and soaps, in church, even in the school’s curriculum. We still were told that men had certain roles and women had others. Men provided for their families and worked; women cooked and cleaned. Women could study and work, but were often reminded that they were not men, so they had to go home and be women. It was common to praise women for how much work they did for their husbands and children, but to give them no recognition for what they did outside the home.

Society has evolved in many different ways since. The average Ugandan has gone through some formal education, owns a mobile phone, watches television, and probably has a theory about why Donald Trump was elected. People are willing to embrace change in many areas of their life: they can get new phones, change their style of dressing, even try out a new beer. Women, especially the single ones, are among the big land owners in and around Kampala. But the ration is still low.

But Ugandans still refer to women with a nostalgic shake of their heads and the word “nowadays.” “You know women of nowadays: they want to be men,” the saying goes.

Yet in reality, many women “nowadays” are fighting back against the “culture” – especially when they realise that they have been given the short end of the stick. In many Ugandan communities, women are pushed to the margins under the pretext they have to observe traditional gender roles. One of the areas that remains heavily influenced by culture is weddings and marriage. Even amongst “middle class” Ugandans, there is a strong attachment to cultural rites surrounding weddings. During bridal showers, for instance, ssengas dispense marriage and sex advice centred on pleasing the man (this function used to be served by paternal aunts of the bride, but the role has today been turned round for economic value and is done by hired professionals. Among my people, the Banyankore, it is men from the potential groom and potential bride’s family who are almost exclusively involved in negotiating enjugano, loosely translated as “bride price”. This haggling over the value of brides as if they were cows in the market has become especially odd in this age where money takes precedence over all. This is compounded by the absence of women in the process, so that it all strikes me as deeply patriarchal.

Today, women are increasingly sharing space with men in ways that the society previously did not allow; they can be business partners, work colleagues, friends and “friends with benefits.” Yet as the famous religious instruction by St. Paul who required women to submit only to their husbands is quoted and emphasised at every wedding, men in all these spaces expect this submission. Many Ugandan men are very comfortable living by a double standard. Yes, a woman must work outside the home and contribute, but she must also carry out the bulk of house work – and care for the children and older relatives. We are told we must raise girls to be assertive, but they must also obey and “respect” men because men are still in charge.

In urban centres, some women are now at the helm of organisations, literally signing men’s pay cheques. This shows that women are just as able as men. When the boys beat you in class today and you beat them tomorrow, you get better performance reviews at work today and they get better reviews following day, then you start to think: Maybe men are not special after all.” It then becomes difficult to watch your husband watch TV as you break your back with household chores and care-work when you cross the threshold after knowing you can outsmart men just the same way they can outsmart women.

Despite the ostensible advances women have made, many men – and women – still have a hard time getting accustomed to women occupying spaces outside of the home. The notion of having a female president is laughable to most, even though Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe once served as Vice President. Some members of the elites grumble that affirmative action is “going too far” and is putting boys and men at a disadvantage. In 1990, the government decided to give an extra 1.5 points in admission scores to all female students joining public universities, and the number of female graduates started to increase. At Makerere, the nation’s largest university, the share of females graduated surpassed males for the first time in 2010 and reached around 55% overall in some years after that. But the female rate dropped to a meagre 0.6 percentage points in 2019. Meanwhile, in Parliament, female representation is below 35%, even when seats are set aside for women in every constituency. This, apparently, is Uganda’s definition of going too far.

Moreover, the crop of empowered women makes up only a small, privileged group. The majority is poorer women who have access to resources only via male relatives or husbands and continue to suffer. Burdened with unpaid care work like having almost the sole responsibility for raising children and taking care of the elderly and the sick, they still work on land they do not own. Sometimes they do not even have ownership of what they grow on this land. They also continue to suffer domestic violence at disproportionate rates. Unfortunately, the success of a few visible women, especially those in positions of authority has not translated to gender equality all over the country.

A whole new world has opened up for women, though: We can go to school, occupy legislative office, open businesses, own land and travel the world – all without the approval of a man. It is okay for women to be found everywhere: at the helm of the city council, in a bar at 3 am, in the corner office, on social media yelling “Men are trash!” and organising a Women’s March.

On social media, interactions between men and women have become more and more fraught and combative. Regardless of what a woman posts, she is likely to receive unseemly comments. A cursory glance through the comments on a female celebrity’s photo posted on Twitter includes an unflattering picture posted as if to discredit her beauty, jokes about her having to announce her new clothes, references to her genitalia, and one lone, inexplicable “B**ch.”

Women who identify as feminists and use the internet for activism report higher levels of harassment and online abuse. Insults usually have to do with us being emotional, ugly, unlovable, and unlikely to find men to marry because we are ugly and unlovable. Sometimes, the attacks seem organised, with trolls swarming online like bees. They go beyond insults; trolls sometimes dish out rape and murder threats. A close friend who started posting openly feminist posts on her Facebook page received numerous comments that she is sex- deprived and wishes to be sexually assaulted. A number of men started commenting on her posts, exchanging jokes about this possibility; one of them bizarrely, targeting her nose. Trolls might be easy to dismiss when they are reported in the news as manufactured in a lab to influence various elections, but it is not that simple when they are friends of friends, men who are known to someone you know, who could very easily find you if they tried.

In pop culture, it is perfectly acceptable for men to sing songs that claim women as “property” and for adverts to portray street harassment presented as if it were a normal way for a man to approach a woman. If a woman points out that such stereotypes are harmful to women, she is accused of taking everything too seriously. Yet, this sense of entitlement to the bodies of women really is harmful. I learnt how to walk further away from men in downtown Kampala when I was still a teenager. My friends and I are constantly afraid, or at least wary, that a man may interrupt a good day with a form of violence, from catcalling or groping, to physical or sexual assault.

On the other hand, men mostly express annoyance at being rejected by women, whether that takes the form of refusing a hug or blocking them on social media. Of course, many men in Uganda face some form of oppression depending on their class, sexual orientation or ethnic origin. This, however, does not necessarily translate into an empathetic view of how women navigate a male-dominated world and a commitment to refrain from harming the women they encounter.

In my interactions with men, some of them have expressed dissatisfaction with the place society assigns them. Yet, they are unwilling to go against the grain and give up the power that comes with the societal pressure to be “man enough”. We have all received and absorbed the same messages about masculinity and femininity. Unlearning these narratives can be a painful process, and less attractive to those who mostly benefit from keeping things as they are.

I am an endless optimist. Despite all the problems I see, and how dysfunctional relationships between men and women often seem, I like to think that more and more people are reimagining life outside of the known social script. That means that we can create a new society where men and women can achieve their full potential. Society can relieve men of the burden to dominate and women of the burden to submit, regardless, and allow them to exercise their full humanity. Society can allow women to enjoy full bodily autonomy and agency and live more fulfilling lives. People often say women and men misunderstand each other, but I think dismantling systems that oppress one group will clear up those communication channels.

I know my brother will never hit a woman because he was taught that lesson at an impressionable age with my father’s red slipper. Even better, I know that as we come to see so many women defining themselves without reference to gender roles, he can fathom women as full human beings outside of their “roles” at home. And today, my brother is not afraid to go to the kitchen: That is the progress that will create a better and free society for women and men.

Ophelia Kemigisha is a feminist activist, human rights lawyer, and writer. She is interested in infusing radical politics into legal structures in order to fight patriarchal violence and oppression. She lives in Kampala, Uganda where she reads, dances, and tweets for the revolution.

“Remembering the Future” has several chapters that address gender relations and roles. Edna Namara’s “The Bride’s Farewell Song” describes the recollections of a grandmother on weddings and marriages in the hill country of Rukiga in Western Uganda. Linda Orando’s “Goria Ubuntu” shares the reflections of her grandfather, a family patriarch, on family and the roles of men and women in the family’s compound in Asinge in Eastern Uganda. And Wobusobozi Amooti Kangere shatters stereotypes in “A Tale of Two Matriarchs,” the story of powerful matriarchs who led his family and community western Uganda’s Ibanda district.