4 - Changing Gender Relations in the Camp

Summary

Do gender roles and relations change upon displacement and during refugees’ encampment, and if so how? By drawing on Hearn’s theory of the hegemony of men as its analytical matrix, this chapter addresses gender systems pre-flight and in Uganda’s Kyaka II, and explores the perceptions of women, men, teenager girls and boys, as well as of aid workers. Systems pre-flight were widely noted to be patriarchal—with men as the hegemonic actor to whom women and youth should submit—while practiced differently across ethnic groups. Such tendencies were also widely shared as ‘normal’ in the camp, but shifts therein did occur. In addition to some men accepting and others contesting the use of force as a legitimate social practice to maintain their dominance, many women in Kyaka II depicted their various roles; teenage girls and boys tended to find their peers to be rather equal meanwhile, but expressed patriarchal perceptions regarding adults. Gender relations were (re)negotiated, and different patterns hereof arose in Kyaka II. Through the nature of the humanitarian support provided, aid workers were influential too. It is argued that they assigned roles, but at the same time hindered men and women from fulfilling them; with their power, aid workers figuratively also became part of the gender systems on-site.