'If books fail, try beauty': Gender, consumption, and higher education in Uganda

Abstract

My dissertation "'If books fail, try beauty': Gender, consumption, and higher education in Uganda," explores students' romantic entanglements at Uganda's Makerere University (the "Harvard of Africa") in order to illuminate emerging processes of value creation in the context of controversial market-based education reforms. Each chapter of my dissertation (in addition to the Introduction and Conclusion) speaks to an underlying question: Why do educated, financially stable young women engage in sexual transactions that incur significant biomedical and social risk? Ultimately, I demonstrate how these reforms - in opposition to their gender equality aims - compel novel sexual and consumption practices that undermine female students' opportunities for success. The aims of my dissertation are three-fold. First, I analyze the interlinked sexual and consumption practices of an emerging demographic group in a post-structural adjustment economy; namely, young, educated, unmarried women. Because they occupy this novel life stage, female students are structurally positioned to be a particularly revelatory group for examining the relationship between institutional restructuring and transforming gender, class, and generational norms in East Africa. Second, this project provides a crucial counterpoint to the bulk of Africanist literature that conflates "youth" with "young men." In doing so, my analysis generates insight into how young women navigate the challenges and opportunities wrought by higher education reform. Third, by taking seriously the prevalence of HIV on African university campuses, this project produces useful knowledge about cross-generational sex and multiple concurrent partnerships - practices that directly contribute to disproportionate rates of HIV among young African women (as opposed to men).