Sexuality Surveillance Discourses of Young Motherhood in Uganda: A Genealogy

Annah Kamusiime ()
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Annah Kamusiime: Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR), International Institute of Social Studies

Chapter Chapter 6 in African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development, 2025, pp 107-125 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Female sexuality has been feared as being hypersexual and thus needing surveillance, control and strict regulations from time immemorial. Girlhood is and has always been synonymous with asexuality and reproduction only approved within a marital union. Girls who defied the normative were gruesomely punished in precolonial Uganda through to the colonial era, until today, and yet scholarship has not brought these different moments into view. Through the lens of genealogy, I reflect on my personal girlhood epoch, weave key informant narrations of two adults who recall how premarital pregnancy was managed, corroborated with the narrative of a woman aged over 90 years old who survived the premarital punishment at the age of 12–15. Girlhood sexuality has been a symbolic space through which intersecting gazes and power are exercised and maintained. I call for a need to learn from our history, be reflexive of our knowledge and appreciate young motherhood as an embodied reality.

Keywords: Agency; Control; Girlhood; Norms; Power; Pregnancy; Punishment island; Uganda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-031-91561-1_6

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-91561-1_6

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