Women who pay their own brideprice: reimagining provider masculinity through Uganda's thriving wedding industry

Abstract

In Uganda, the ‘traditional’ wedding, wherein a groom brings money and gifts to his father-in-law's home, has long been understood as the ultimate demonstration of a man's social maturity. Yet masculine adulthood is becoming increasingly elusive as weddings become more difficult to afford. Widespread unemployment has rendered most young men unable to fund the rituals while weddings themselves have become exceptionally lavish: brideprice payments now include ‘cows’, or millions of Ugandan shillings, as well as furniture sets, refrigerators, televisions, and even cars. With wedding expenses surging and their fiancés out of work, women have begun ‘paying their own brideprice’, as Ugandans say, by contributing substantially to wedding costs. In this article, we explore this oft-debated phenomenon. We propose that the emergence of women who pay their own brideprice has invited a broad reimagining of the gendered economic ideologies that tether men to money under the rubric of provider masculinity. That celebratory, seemingly innocuous events such as weddings occasion the questioning of hegemonic forms of masculinity is particularly notable in Uganda, where gender conservatism dominates public discourse. Beyond Uganda, our case suggests revisiting the normative as a potent site for observing gendered social change.