Of Patriarchy and Complementary Gender Relations: Rethinking ‘African’ Masculinities and Femininities through Community and Colonial Archives in Uganda

Abstract

Popular discourse on gender relations worldwide presuppose that all women have occupied subordinate positions in relation to men since the beginning of time in both public and private spheres due to patriarchy. Yet, some decolonial feminists argue that while patriarchies everywhere stem from the same roots of male power, and whereas there are some overlaps in the way women experience oppression globally, patriarchal relations in some pre-colonial African communities entailed forms of negotiation, collaboration, interdependence and a sense of complementarity between and amongst women and men. How then, can we rethink patriarchy beyond categorial power relations? How would analysis of specific geographies, cultures and (pre)colonial experiences enable us to understand different and evolving forms of patriarchies and women and men’s unique experience of these? What contemporary lessons –about patriarchy and complementary masculinities and femininities— do we learn by looking back into precolonial gender relations? I draw from an ongoing archival study on men, marriage and memory in Uganda and work with critical masculinities and decolonial feminisms to examine how community and colonial archives constructed and represented men’s and women’s identities (masculinities and femininities) and the patriarchal relations therefrom. I particularly ask: What does an examination of men and women’s everyday cultural practices and interactions in (pre)colonial African communities tell us about complementarity –ways in which certain cultures emphasized collegial, partnership-centered relationships between men and women? What implications do these relations have for rethinking contemporary forms of patriarchy as well as re-imagining cultural norms and practices of collaboration, coalition, complementarity for gender equality?