Something for Something: Understanding Transactional Sex among Campus Girls in Kampala.

Abstract

This thesis aims to show how we can understand the transactional sexual relationships female university students in Kampala (Uganda) engage in from a context with both local traditions and gender relations, and influences of western modernization and heterosexual lifestyles. I argue how different elements of local traditions and gender structure such as bride wealth and the men’s control over women’s sexuality; western influences of modernization, a consumerism lifestyle; and heterosexual lifestyles, with the disassociation of sex from marriage, are visible in the transactional sexual relationships campus girls in Kampala engage in. The results of this research show that we cannot view transactional sex in just an African context, but how this practice originated in a context with both local and global elements.