'Producing' Respect: The 'Proper Woman' in Postcolonial Kampala

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Book chapter

Title:	'Producing' Respect: The 'Proper Woman' in Postcolonial Kampala
Author:	Ogden, Jessica A.
Book title:	Postcolonial Identities in Africa
Year:	1996
Pages:	165-192
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	urbanization Cultural Roles Sex Roles
Abstract:	The experience of Ugandan women coming to town during the colonial years in search of a better life was framed by an early and persistent stigmatization. Their participation in town life, indeed their very presence in town, was denigrated. This chapter examines how this colonial history and its discourse influenced the postcolonial construction of identity for urban women in Uganda, how ordinary urban women engaged with and/or renegotiated this semantic field on the way to engendering respect and being identified as Proper Women, and how the presence of AIDS influences these processes. The author's concern is primarily with women living in a densely settled, lower-income neighbourhood of postcolonial Kampala, Kifumbira I. She shows that women responded to the moral devaluation of their persons by generating and manipulating the meanings which enable them to construct positive identities through childbearing and marriage. AIDS threatens to subvert very radically the constructed status of wife and mother. Nevertheless, the women of Kifumbira I continue to privilege the values associated with childbearing, motherhood and marriage when making sexual and reproductive decisions. Bibliogr., notes, ref.