Women, Work and Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003 (review)

This book’s value is not the authors’ concept of “domestic virtue” but rather their contribution to the social history of Ugandan women. The authors are very interested in their idea of a shared African-British model of an ideal submissive and domestic woman; they contend that this model was imposed on women from the early twentieth century. But the concept is too broad to be useful, for the authors also establish regional differences in women’s experiences, leaving unclear how the model was universal to women in Uganda. Nonetheless, even without reference to domestic virtue the book would still be a good history of a century of the changing status of women, and of women’s work, in the region that became Uganda.

The title is misleading. While in their introduction Kyomuhendo and McIntosh argue that the history of women’s work in Uganda has been determined by eight factors, only one is the ideology of domestic virtue: they neglect the other seven factors. A more precise title might have highlighted the gendered division of property. Indeed, thinking back on her childhood, a woman from western Uganda uttered the perfect title: “They used to think everything is for men.” Kyomuhendo and McIntosh’s research reveals that money and the competition for it was a reason that men limited women’s actions. Fathers and uncles declined to continue educating girls not because of a model of “virtue,” but because they were anxious to collect bride price; for many Ugandan men a woman was a source of funds.

Marvelous use of oral and archival sources makes this is a good account of changing gender formulations and of women’s development and achievement in the twentieth century. In this nice product of international scholarly collaboration, the two scholars worked to their individual strengths: the Ugandan scholar worked on the interviews, the American on the written sources. They also trained a team of interviewers to target their home areas in their own languages. The authors admit that their sample is skewed toward high achieving and educated women. Nonetheless, the personal profiles of women are delightfully rich; it is exciting to see real people in Ugandan scholarship.

While the analysis does not link changes in gender formulation to changes in wider society, it does provide evidence of much more: a look at these women’s lives challenges our assumptions of marriage, couples, careers, and family. None of the women were without dependents. Very few engaged in only one enterprise. Many were single heads of household. Yet in this presentation gendered experience is not confined only to women: there is also evidence of the expectations of men. For example, one elite woman felt pressure from her husband to avoid work outside the home. Beyond what this says about male expectations of women, it also says something about what the husband was trying to achieve for himself.

The model of domestic virtue forces the authors to reach some underwhelming conclusions, none of which seems particularly illuminating of Uganda. They find that men believed women should marry, submit, provide services, bear and socialize children, maintain households, and not control resources. They also find that there were barriers to women’s achievement outside the home and garden: women working outside the home depended on other women to run their houses; there were cultural reasons that women did the types of economic activities they did; and unmarried independent women were a threat to men. There is also no evidence that these phenomena did not exist before 1910, the year to which the authors ascribe the formation of this model in the minds of the British and African men. Indeed, some evidence actually undermines their argument that the domestic virtue model limited women’s progress. Women’s political organizations proliferated even before women could vote. Women and men both expressed...