Household Economic Strategies and the Dynamics of Marital Power in Rural Africa: Ugandan Case

Kofi D. Benefo, City University of New York

In this study, I examine the effects of the household commercial production on women's marital power in rural Uganda. The developmental significance of African women's empowerment has become clear as development projects have gone awry because they made erroneous assumptions about African women's motivations and their lives. It has become evident that interventions into African social life often have to be based on solid understanding of the opportunities and constraints facing African women. This study borrows from the marginalization perspectives on women's status to examine hypotheses about the impact of household market production on women's marital power in rural Uganda. Data for the study come from the 1995/96 Negotiating Reproductive Outcomes survey conducted in the Masaka and Lira districts of Uganda by the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program of Macro International and the Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISAE) at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.