ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the potential for women, as autonomous political actors, to influence the decisions of a skewed institution—the Constituent Assembly —wherein the 1995 Ugandan constitution was debated and promulgated. It investigates the complex ways that gender inhibits, empowers, and influences legislators in the Ugandan parliament, thus highlighting its prominence and pervasiveness in this sphere of society. The chapter suggests that the legislative activities of women representatives are best explained in terms of gender. Gender as a structure is so pervasive that it orders the social interaction between female and male legislators and infiltrates the parliamentary institution itself. The caution for "more motherliness' and "less arrogance" highlights the intersection of power, gender, and dominance in parliamentary politics. Feminists have argued that sexual practices are one of the most important modes of effecting and perpetuating women's oppression. Sexual prowess in most African cultures symbolizes men's power and is intricately linked with the institution of polygyny and culturally endorsed male promiscuity.
