Situated empowerment: Mobile phones practices among market women in Kampala

Abstract

In this article we depart from studies on empowerment and its intersections with the informal economy and market women in the Global South and promises of the mobile phone in so-called developing regions. Conducting an explorative study among market women in Kampala, the aim is to examine what roles (if any) the mobile phone plays for them in terms of empowerment. Our findings resonate with studies from other parts of the world, suggesting that while pivotal for their business endeavors, mobile phone practices are also embedded in patriarchal structures. By discussing how these market women navigate the tensions between using the phone for their business and in relations to their partners, the article contributes a more nuanced and context-specific understanding of mobile phone practices and the empowerment of market women. We conclude the article by suggesting a situated approach to the study of empowerment.

Keywords

Development empowerment gender informal economy Kampala market women M4D mobile phones Uganda

Introduction

Field notes from November 25, 2014:

It is barely 9 a.m. and already the hustle and bustle of Kalerwe market is well underway. We plan on spending the day with the market women and learn that their day begun at least 4 hours before we arrived. They tell us that they have to be early to acquire stock from the trucks that deliver fresh produce. We meet Cindy at a makeshift stall that is crammed with toys, covered by a makeshift umbrella that has seen better days. We ask her what life was like before the mobile phone; “we do not know a world without mobile phones” she responds. Talking to Cindy we are interrupted by a middle-aged man asking her who we are. We turn to him greet him and respond to his questions. He takes the opportunity to inform us how annoying the advertising spam is, especially for them who have basic feature phones that require constant deleting of these messages if they are to have space for authentic text messages. “Please tell [those service providers] to stop sending those messages,” he continues, at which point Cindy who has struggled to get a word in during his rant interrupts him to say that we are there to visit her and not him. He keeps quiet for a short while as we continue to chat with Cindy, but he never leaves her side and occasionally jumps in to speak. The expression on Cindy’s face speaks volumes. She is annoyed that this man will not leave her side, insists on speaking for her and is taking time away from her conversation with us. Similar patterns of behavior are noted in other locations with men leaving their stalls and standing next to the women we are talking to, never leaving their side until we say our good byes. We draw parallels with stories women share about the men in their lives always monitoring their mobile phone communication.

In this article we aim to understand the role of communication on mobile phones towards empowering market women in Kampala. Mobile telephony has grown at an exponential rate in developing countries. At the end of 2014, the number of mobile cellular telephone subscriptions had reached 95 per 100 inhabitants of the world population (International Communication Union [ITU], 2014). Hence, there is no doubt that the proliferation of mobile telephony has opened up a range of possibilities and new avenues for development. A significant number of research projects have published empirically backed arguments on the empowering properties of mobile phones focusing on women in the Global South (see Macueve, Mandlate, Ginger, Gaster, & Macome, 2009; Nath, 2001). In many of these studies the discussion around mobile-phone-enabled empowerment suggests that once acquired, empowerment becomes a stable constant to the empowered women (see e.g., Nath, 2001). In this article we will suggest a procedural, always in negotiation, contingent on spatial, social, and technical whims notion, that is, a situated understanding of empowerment.

Research in the area of M4D (mobile communication technology for development), has been dominated by economic understandings of development (Svensson & Wamala-Larsson, 2015). Hann and Hart (2011, p. 101) claim that the ultimate drive for development in postcolonial times is a better world in which the rich countries help poorer (often former colonies) in order to improve their economic prospects. Adopting a more critical perspective, we argue that conceiving of people in developing countries as mere consumers—forming part of the bottom of a postcolonial pyramid, and hence only interesting for enterprises aiming at accumulating capital—is not only unattractive, but also leads to questionable development interventions (see Dodson, Sterling, & Bennett, 2013). Therefore we have chosen to construct this project around the notion of empowerment rather than on economic development.

Overview of the concept and the field

In forging our understanding of empowerment we turn to often-cited gender and development scholar Naila Kabeer (1999) who defines empowerment as “the process through which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life choices acquire such an ability” (p. 435). Indeed, many studies seem to understand empowerment in terms of agency and the ability to address one’s life situation (Bali Swain, 2012, p. 60; Drolet, 2011, p. 631; Lennie & Tacchi, 2013, p. 108). In this way empowerment resonates with economist Amartya Sen’s (1999) capability approach. Sen (1999, pp. 3–4) theorizes development as expanding freedoms that lend themselves towards the capacity of individuals not only to assess, but also to have the capability to transform, their situations. Within the area of M4D, Smith, Spence, and Rashid (2011) have applied Sen’s capability approach by emphasizing how mobile phones alter users’ capabilities through increased access to timely and relevant information, as well as through expanded possibilities for connectedness between people. Smith et al. (2011) argue that Sen’s capability approach helps us look beyond traditional economic measures of development and instead consider empowerment (something Sen himself also underlines, see Sen, 1999, p. 3), which is exactly what we are aiming for here. To study the role of communication through mobile phones for empowerment then becomes a study of the role of the mobile phone in transforming the capabilities of users and their recognition of those capabilities in order to empower them to act for change.

Empowerment has been connected to women because of the concept’s background in the feminist and Black movements of the 1970s (see hooks, 1981). Bali Swain (2012, pp. 59, 63) defines women empowerment as a process in which women challenge existing norms and culture to improve their own well-being. While the well-being has been in focus for women’s empowerment, Sen (1999, p. 189) outlines a shift from what he labels a “welfarist” account towards a greater focus on women’s agency. Sen has been criticized for reducing empowerment to individual capabilities (see Sengupta, 2013). Therefore it is important to underline that the ability to change one’s life situation also depends on surrounding structures that allow one to do so.¹

Here we argue that overarching patriarchal structures often are key obstacles for women’s empowerment. Power is at the core of the concept empowerment and it entails a redistribution of power (Drolet, 2011, pp. 634, 639), in our case from men to women. Hence, to discuss empowerment, the question we need to ask is what kind of power is at stake. In this article the kind of power we study is women’s capabilities to change their life situation, something we argue is both dependent on the agency and capabilities of women as well as the structures around them (see also Ling & Horst, 2011; Torri & Martinez, 2014, p. 35).

In this study of market women in Kampala we focus on how economic security and independence continue to be cornerstones of empowerment and autonomy (Bali Swain, 2012, pp. 79–80). We have chosen to study street markets, a central institution of the informal economy that is particularly welcoming/accessible to women as it allows them to enter even with a very small capital and few products. The term has been used to describe the uncontrolled side of the economy, bazaar type street economies often found in developing cities different from the firm type economies in corporations found in the West (Hann & Hart, 2011, p. 113). The informal economy is responsible for the well-being of more than 1.8 billion people worldwide and continues to rise steadily due to a number of factors such as growing retrenchments in formal sectors and increasing numbers of school drop outs (Ikoja-Odongo & Ocholla, 2004). Market sites in Africa have traditionally been restricted to specific times and places, leaving most production and consumption to be organized by kinship ties (Hann & Hart, 2011, p. 25).² The African informal economy is thus a good area to study women’s empowerment since it is based both on agency (self-employment) and structural opportunities and constraints (tradition and kinship ties).

According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics cited in the Daily Monitor (“Informal Sector Now,” 2014),³ the country’s informal sector is growing exponentially and currently accounts for 43% of the total economy. As one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa with existing statistics on the sector, Uganda is among the top five within the measured countries (International Labour Office [ILO] & Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing [WIEGO], 2013). A current World Bank report (2013, p. 33) further suggests that informal enterprises are the biggest source of employment in urban areas. In Kampala, Uganda’s capital, 15% of informal enterprises operate in specialized fixed locations, most commonly urban market stalls (The World Bank, 2013, p. 33). While the informal sector is plagued with uncertainty (such as job insecurity, weak to nonexistent labor laws, inflexible working hours, and low wages) the sector’s steady growth continues to enable those unable to secure formal employment the opportunity to evade poverty.

It is women that seem to dominate the informal economy (see Charmes, 2012, p. 129; Torri & Martinez, 2014, p. 32). In sub-Saharan Africa women have been prominent market traders for a long time, and have played a significant role in the circulation of goods (Hann & Hart, 2011, p. 79). The high participation of women is explained by their lack of access to, control of, and ownership of property and land (Wamala, 2012). Women in the Global South, Uganda included, are usually at the lower end of the social economic scale, a position determined by tradition and social structures. In this sense, venturing into the informal economy is a sign of empowerment in itself.

Access to timely information has become an integral part of informal economic activities. Access to real-time information through various communication technologies has almost become synonymous with increased possibilities for livelihood (Tawah, 2013, p. 64). This is a popular topic within the area of M4D (Svensson & Wamala-Larsson, 2015) going back to Jensen’s (2007) influential and widely cited article on fishermen’s use of mobile phones in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Mobile phones and livelihood studies are however not without their critics. Some argue that mobile phones sometimes increase poverty, and that developmental approaches neglect structural dynamics and contradictory impacts of mobile telephony (see Carmody, 2012).

Could the mobile phone contribute to the process of empowering women? Even though cyber-feminists have looked upon ICTs (information and communication technologies) as tools that will empower women (see Plant, 1997), Tenhunen (2013, p. 6) argues that gender has rarely been addressed in the area of M4D. There is no doubt that the mobile phone has improved access to quick information as well as providing users a tool for communication. This may be considered as improvements of capabilities of those having access to mobile phones to communicate with others. For example, a study among housewives in Sri Lanka concluded that the mobile phone empowered them in terms of expanding their social circles and support groups (Handapangoda & Kumara, 2013). At the same time the authors argue that access and use patterns of mobile phones are still largely framed by patriarchal power structures (p. 363, see also Ling & Horst, 2011; Wamala, 2013).

Ling and Donner (2009, pp. 18, 24) discuss mobile phones as affording connectivity, reachability, and individual addressability. According to them, this plays an important role in using the mobile phone to coordinate everyday life activities; the fine-graining of interactions between friends and family, which in turn contribute to the maintenance of social cohesion among family and peer networks. Juggling different roles is significantly easier with a mobile phone. By providing women the opportunity to switch roles without changing location, mobile phones enable women’s organized and coordinated involvement in many different roles simultaneously (Macueve et al., 2009). At the same time, the use of different communication platforms has consequences for social relations. According to Madianou and Miller’s (2013) study of transnational families in the UK, social relations are navigated by consciously or unconsciously choosing which media to communicate through.

If we turn to market women, the basic idea is that interactive technology lowers information costs and therefore makes it possible for more of them to enter markets (Hann & Hart, 2011, p. 34). Boateng, Hinson, Galadima, and Olumide (2014) conducted a study on the influence of the mobile phone among market women in Nigeria and concluded that the phone made access to real-time information possible, including locating other users (p. 34), thus enhancing communication and trading processes as well as the possible removal of middlemen (p. 35; see also Tawah’s [2013] study of market women in Cameroon). Here, it was the immediacy, ubiquity, and possibilities of personalization that the mobile phone offered that benefitted the traders (Boateng et al., 2014, p. 43). Mobile phones may also be of benefit to middlemen (Aker, 2008; Jagun, Heeks, & Whalley, 2008). Grain traders in markets with cell phone coverage search over a greater number of markets, have more contacts and sell more (Aker, 2008, pp. 4–5). Indeed, calls at a distance reduce the time of trades and replace costly journeys (Jagun et al., 2008). Hence, there is a significant potential of mobile use to increase productivity (as also noted by Donner & Escobari’s [2010] metastudy on the use of mobile phones by SMEs [small and medium enterprises] in developing countries). It has therefore been argued that portability and text-messaging features facilitate women’s participation in the market (Handapangoda & Kumara, 2013, p. 363), even though their use may incur high airtime and maintenance costs (Tawah, 2013).

However, several authors suggest we take such success stories with a pinch of salt (Dodson et al., 2013; Lennie & Tacchi, 2013, p. 41). Mobile phones themselves do not empower people and do not cause change (Wamala, 2012, pp. 37–39). They can under some circumstances facilitate social change but under other circumstances strengthen established power arrangements and buttress subservience (see Ling & Horst, 2011; Wamala, 2013). Similarly Donner and Escobari (2010) conclude that not all SMEs will prosper from increased access to mobile communication. Benefits accrue mostly to existing enterprises in ways that amplify and accelerate material and informational flows (rather than fundamentally transforming them). Furthermore, mobile phones are not immune to relations of power, gender structures, and sociocultural norms. In Uganda, Wamala (2013) illustrates the social inequalities pervading mobile phone access and use among university students. Wamala found that “expressions of gender are changing with the advent of ICT, but to a greater degree, the gender order at play is reinforced” (p. 9). Therefore we need to consider how these communication platforms are understood, appropriated, and domesticated by the market women themselves in order to study if, and how they contribute to empowerment.

Methods and material

This study has been explorative in the sense that we entered the field for the first time in November 2014 supported by small grants that only made it possible for us to stay 2 weeks. However, prior to our arrival we had organized, through field assistants, a small survey of 150 women, 50 in each of the three biggest markets in Kampala; Owino, Kalerwe, and Nakawa. Each woman that took part in the survey was asked if she would take part in a focus group discussion, and the field assistants followed up with the women that agreed with letters of invitation.⁴ Upon our arrival we arranged three focus group discussions at each of the three markets with 15 women in each discussion. After establishing a relationship with some of these women, the focus groups were followed by participant observations in the markets together with informal interviews as we conducted the observations. As such we went from a general survey overview to in-depth ethnography when trying to understand mobile phones and empowerment for these women.

We did not take it for granted that the women would own or have access to a mobile phone. We prepared our survey questionnaire to firstly inquire what type of enterprise the women were involved in, before dedicating a section of the questionnaire to mobile phone ownership and/or access.⁵ The survey targeted 150 randomly selected respondents in the three markets. After cleaning the data and checking for consistency 149 surveys were left. Some respondents could neither read the questions, that were written in English, nor write down responses, thus requiring the use of research assistants who administered the questionnaire and thus, translated the questions to the local language, Luganda. The completed surveys were then coded and put into SPSS. The research assistants were instructed to get a representative sample in terms of age and businesses. The aim of the survey was to get a general overview of the market women, their contexts, and communication practices as well as a hint of their usages of mobile phones. Being perfectly aware that we cannot fully quantify qualitative notions (such as capability), we still wanted to have an overview before arriving in Kampala and conducting the more qualitative studies given the little time we had at our disposal.

For the focus groups we targeted 45 vendors, 15 in each market. In the Nakawa focus group we had 16 participants giving us a total sample of 46. We developed a focus group interview guide revolving around clarifications of what we found interesting in the survey as well as batches of questions around empowerment, patriarchal structures, and affordances of the mobile phone. The focus groups lasted approximately 90 to 120 minutes, took place in a covered location close to the market where we could also offer refreshments. A trained research assistant conducted the interviews in Luganda while we took part as observers. If there were something we deemed particularly interesting, one of the authors (fluent in Luganda) would intervene with follow-up questions and thus complement the research assistant. The interviews were recorded and transcribed directly into English from Luganda.

Finally we asked for permission to visit some of the participants in the markets and conduct participant observations. Some of the women took this quite literally and we found ourselves selling water, polishing shoes, washing food plates, as well as grinding peanuts. It is questionable if this gave us an in-depth understanding of the studied women, but it provided us ample opportunities to follow up on the focus group interviews and go deeper in areas we had found particularly interesting during the focus group discussions. Important for this article is how these women navigated the tensions between using the phone in their businesses and at home in front of their partners. It became apparent to us that it was easier for the women to talk about their men and their relationships when in the focus groups compared to when we met them individually in the markets. The group setting during the focus group obviously contributed to the women’s willingness to share with each other and us. In addition, the perpetual lingering of men around the women when we visited them at the market stalls affected the women’s willingness to speak freely. The empirical material presented in this article is in the form of field notes taken by us and direct quotes from the women, and we employ a thematic analysis on empowerment, gender, and mobile phone use.

We had the consent from all of the participants to conduct the surveys and focus groups and to visit the markets. No one was forced to participate and indeed, asking questions about mobile phones did make some women anxious and they opted out of our study. The ones who did participate were assured confidentiality through a formal letter. A formal letter of invitation was also presented to the women participating in the focus group discussion. All the participating women were compensated for the potential financial loss of being away from their stalls during the focus groups. To retain the women’s privacy we have used pseudonyms⁶ in this article.

Results

Overview of the market women and their mobile phone usage

Owino, Kalerwe, and Nakawa markets in Kampala are the three biggest. These markets are on undeveloped grounds (unpaved, not tarred) and in open air, some parts have provisional shacks loosely built with iron sheets and pieces of wood. The women complained about their work environment, as being too hot under the iron sheet roof (or in the open) when the sun was out, and being completely drenched and muddied when it rained. Some women in Nakawa, whose businesses were situated close to the ablutions, complained about the general hygiene. The markets were surprisingly quiet. Apart from Owino market, no one called out to the visitors as we were used to from market experiences in other places. The markets were also quite clean with Nakawa even having the city organ KCCA (Kampala Capital City Authority) cleaning up and collecting garbage every day.⁷ The women further reported on problems of theft, which often led to the women changing businesses or being engaged in different businesses at once. At both Kalerwe and Owino men at times supervised us as we talked to the women, claiming to be either brothers or in charge of the women’s safety (as exemplified in the Introduction).

From the survey we find out that most of the women were in their 20s. Approximately half of them were married and most had one child or more. Over one third of the women sold second-hand clothes or shoes. Other common business areas were food, fresh produce, crisps and other snacks, plastics, and fruits and vegetables. A vast majority worked 8 hours a day or more, and only nine of the women worked less than 6 days a week. These women made approximately 30,000 shillings a day (which roughly equals €8.00). One hundred forty-three women (of the 149) had their own mobile phone, a phone they rather used at work than in front of their partners. All of the women stated that the phone helped in their businesses and 124 even claimed their income had increased after they started using their mobile phones. At the same time, 114 women also stated that their expenditures had increased with the phone. One hundred twenty-six used the phone to contact other market women and also 126 used it for contacting suppliers. Interestingly, 19 women claimed that their partner did not even know they had a phone. One hundred and seven claimed that there were messages they received that they couldn’t share with their partners, and more women in the sample would trust their sisters and even their children to answer their phone than their partners. One hundred and nineteen stated that they had less control over their privacy since they got the phone, while interestingly, 135 claimed they had more control over their family’s economic situation. Finally, 106 of the 149 in the sample stated that they did not feel they could change the situation they were in, suggesting that a majority of these women did not feel empowered.

From the focus groups discussions we can add that most women had gone to school, were literate and well dressed (especially the Nakawa market women). All focus groups started and ended with prayer. A majority of the women were Christians even though we had two in the focus groups with Muslim attire. There seemed to be no tensions between the women belonging to different religions.

“The phone runs the business”

The mobile phone is largely beneficial for the market women as it helps smooth their businesses. They connect to costumers through the phone and call their customers when they have goods available. Maggie from Nakawa shared the impact the phone has had on her business.

I sell second-hand shoes for school-going children. I have a regular client base that send text messages or even call to ask if I have acquired the type of shoe the parent was looking for during a prior visit. Similarly I use the phone to contact the customer when I have the shoe in stock and they can then come and pick it up.

Another example of mobile phone usage was to set up meeting places with customers who wouldn’t find them in the maze of the market as in the following example, talking to three women with adjacent stalls at the Owino market, selling women’s office wear and second-hand business suits.

This market of ours is not easy to navigate if you are not a regular [client, or trader]. That is why we had to give you our numbers so you could find us when you come here today. Our customers call us, many of them park their cars and call us and we go to them with the suits so they can choose. Some of them even send their maids or other people to come and fetch the clothes for them, and they send us the money on this [holds up the phone]. Sometimes we get calls from new customers, who have got our numbers from our usual customers, and they too want our suits. (Joyce)

Hence, the phone was also used to snowball costumers, that is, to ask customers to share their phone number among their friends and so on. Women explained that phone numbers were always exchanged when they did business, or as one woman expressed it: “the phone runs the business.” One woman even told us she could send goods by bus to customers far away and get paid through mobile money.

Through mobile money, the phone was also used to connect to and pay suppliers, middlemen, hence helping them fine-grain their everyday activities (in line with Ling & Donner’s [2009] argument). However their uses did not change anything in the supply chain (as also noted by Boateng et al., 2014, p. 43). Furthermore the phone also meant harder work since it allowed women to engage in more than one business and made sure they were constantly reachable. They had to be on call 24/7 as suppliers or customers could contact them at any time, as exemplified here by Angie (Nakawa) selling second-hand clothes “When stock comes in, they sort out the clothes into categories and then call us to inform us when the clothes have come. I have to have my phone on, because they can call any time.”

One interesting aspect, and potentially empowering use of the mobile phone, was to connect women in so-called saving circles. Here women organized themselves to save money together in groups. In one example from Nakawa, women in the same saving circle contributed an agreed-upon sum every month, and every fifth month one of the women would then collect the lump sum. This was helpful towards paying for example school fees for their children or medical bills. These saving circles most often corresponded to circles of colleague-friends in the market that they aimed to help out (e.g., watching each other’s stall if they had to leave to meet a customer, snowballing customers to each other, etc.). Ester, a lady who had us sell water for her in Nakawa, pointed to her neighbor who sold chips and chicken as the one who helped her sell her water when she was not in her makeshift shop. Indeed the neighbor came to us while Ester was out searching for additional customers, to request a bottle of water for free. When Ester returned and we informed her that her neighbor had taken water without paying for it, she replied “yes we help each other here.” The social life in the market was important for these women who did not necessarily view each other as competitors. Rather there was a competition between groups of women (often forming saving circles together; see also Clark, 2010).

Market women and Ugandan patriarchy

Women from all three markets talked about what it meant for them to wake up every morning and come to their market stall and trade. Doing this, gave them the means to contribute to the family upkeep, feed themselves and their children, achieve financial autonomy, and have meaning and purpose in their lives. They did not want to depend on their men. The majority of women in the three markets talked about children as the joy in their lives, and that the men had either abandoned their responsibilities, were deceased, or were themselves struggling to make a living. Many of the women informed us that their children’s father(s) even though alive, well and earning a living, had left the responsibility of raising the children to them. Hence, venturing into the informal economy made these women less dependent on their men and more financially independent.

At the same time, this gave the men an excuse to walk out of their financial responsibilities as fathers. A majority of the women told us that they were the sole providers in their homes and that the “men are only good for making babies.” The maturation to womanhood in Uganda is achieved through having children even more so than marriage. According to Nannyonga-Tamusuza (2005, pp. 121–122) a woman’s social worth or the definition of a woman’s properness is defined by their ability to have children. Quite a few of the women participating in our study were pregnant at the time. The problem though, was that the fathers neither helped with feeding their children nor provided for their education. This was a major issue for the women we talked to and directly led them venturing into the informal economy. In the focus groups, women told us that the more money they came home with, the less money they would get from their partners. Market trade made them financially independent, and able to do without men, which in turn led men to step out of their responsibilities as husbands and fathers. Hence their financial empowerment became entangled with patriarchal structures as they became the main/sole providers to the household.

Mobile phone use around men

The independence and confidence of the women we met were striking, especially if you compare to studies from Asia were women often were trapped in their homes under the rule of the patriarch (see e.g., Handapangoda & Kumara, 2013). However, while men had no say in their business, it was different around men at home. Even though men were considered lazy (especially when talked about in the focus groups), women did respect their husbands at the same time. And here the mobile phone could pose problems for the women since their men were prone to inquisitions fuelled by jealousy. The women always kept their phones with them, because they had to make money, but at the same time they had to keep their men appease. Judging from the women’s stories, many of their men believed they were having affairs every time a customer or supplier called. Men questioned them when they called customers in the evening or were called back. As an example, one woman in Owino, during the focus group discussion, said:

One should not have the misfortune of a bad connection when the phone rings, if you say to your caller “let me look for network,” your husband perceives this as code for let me move away from prying ears so we can talk privately, they are not beyond grabbing the phone from you to check who is on the other end. (Hawa)

Angie from Nakawa market contributed to this discussion with her own experience:

If you do not have the same intellectual capacity as your partner it is easy for them to control your phone . . . My boyfriend bought me my previous phone, the one I have now is new, and he used the “call-diverting” or “call-forwarding” feature to direct all my calls to reach him first before the calls could come to me. I did not understand why my friends and my customers often told me that a man’s voice always answered the phone first before my voice would come on the line. When I discovered, thanks to a friend, I returned the phone he bought and got my own.

Thus, the phone was used by jealous men to control and check upon women. During the focus group in Nakawa, one of the women’s phone rung incessantly and after a while she took the call and spoke in hushed tones as the conversation around her continued. Later she revealed that her husband had been to her stall and not finding her begun a search for her while calling her mobile.

The stories we came across in Kampala resemble Archambault’s (2011) study of the transformative potential of mobile communication in Mozambique. Archambault found that the mobile phone helped negotiate complex relationships and was often blamed for the subsequent ending of these same relations. Similarly, Stark (2013) in her study in the slum areas of Dar es Saalam found that it is in the area of relationships with men that women mentioned most drawbacks of mobile telephony. Both men and women used their phones to start and maintain several relationships, which also helped them to manage these without their partners learning about it (by blocking incoming calls and not allowing partners to touch their phone, see Stark, 2013, p. 22). Some young men in Stark’s study did not even want their girlfriends to have mobile phones. This explains perhaps the mistrust between men and women in some of the relationships we encountered, a mistrust mobile phone practices contributed to.

However, the women developed strategies to negotiate between the necessary uses of mobile phones in their business while avoiding making men round them jealous. One example is Connie in Owino who said “you have to control the phone, not let the phone control you.” When asked what she meant by this she replied

My customers know which hours to call me and which hours not to call me, if you want peace in your home you have to tell people to respect these boundaries . . . when I reach home, I put my phone in plain view, it doesn’t ring after 8 p.m.

However, when we asked the women if their husbands’ phones rang at night, “yes” they all responded. “And sometimes they will even get up at that hour in the night and go respond to that caller.” Thus, the market women informing our study, navigated these complex relationships in the way they used their mobile phone (see also Madianou & Miller, 2013).

So far our results resonate with findings in recent studies from other parts of the globe concluding that, empowerment when reduced to financial resources, is unlikely to lead to fundamental changes in gender structures (Drolet, 2011, p. 634; Horst, 2006; Sengupta, 2013, p. 297; Torri & Martinez, 2014). Despite increased economic contributions, the gender structures at home remain unchanged. Hence, the mobile phone seems to both aid women in their businesses (by affording connectivity) and become a tool for their surveillance by jealous male partners creating tension at home. As Tenhunen (2013, p. 9) puts it, mobile telephony tends to amplify existing structures, but also blur cultural boundaries at the same time creating some space for agency. The same technology can empower women as well as amplify gender disparities. This leads us to conceptualize mobile phones and empowerment among market women from a situated approach.

A situated approach to empowerment

If we place the mobile phone at the center of empowerment practices, we realize that empowerment is situational. Technical demands can render or alter the form empowerment assumes. For example, women talked about network issues, which tie them to the location they find themselves in. Recall the example of the women from Owino who mentioned their partners’ rising suspicion if they (according to the partners) “feigned” network problems upon receiving a call. Furthermore, the society around them pushed them to negotiate the empowering practices of earning their own money within Ugandan patriarchal structures. For example, not declaring their income to their husbands/partners (as many women did) could be read as respecting the man’s breadwinner role. At the same time, this ensured at least some financial responsibility for the household on the part of the men since the more money women earned, the less contribution they tended to receive from their partners. Other stories speak to the point of situated empowerment further:

Cathy boarded the popular public minibus only to realize that she did not have enough money to pay for the fare. She had already gone quite someway when she made the discovery and in panic checked her mobile phone for the mobile money balance. Realizing that she had enough money to cover her fare she turned to the conductor (this is an individual who usually sits at the exit of the sliding door of these minibuses and ushers in and collects money from passengers) and asked him if he had a mobile money account because she was a little low on physical cash. The conductor responded by giving her his mobile number and she was able to make a transfer immediately. She concluded “that moment made me feel so good and empowered because this little thing [holds up her phone] really helped me in that moment.” (Field notes November 21, 2014)

In other words, the practice of mobile money empowered her in that particular situation.

Recall the example narrated by the women from the Owino focus group who discussed the challenges the mobile phone has sometimes brought to their private lives with jealous partners who wanted to control their communication and movement patterns. In this situation, the mobile phone practices are embedded into larger disempowering patriarchal structures. One woman at Owino shared that having been physically abused by her partner, she retaliated by not picking up his calls the day after because she was still angry with him.

A situated approach reveals how women become empowered in certain situations and the constitution of this depends on diverse situations such as functioning networks as well as social relations. The woman who refused to answer her phone when her partner called, continued saying that “I know that he feels bad and wants to apologize, but I am not ready to hear the apology.” In this moment when through the mobile phone she refuses the partner’s apologetic gesture, she explores and practices her capabilities to protest against his patriarchal behavior. Hence, she becomes empowered in this situation. Yet previously the same phone has been at the center of her disempowerment at home. Cathy felt empowered when she could pay for her taxi fare using mobile money, but she was also one of the women who had phone usage curfews when at home so she could maintain peace in her private life.

Conclusion

The mobile phone does not necessarily challenge patriarchal structures. Resonating with other studies (see e.g., Sengupta, 2013) we can conclude that for long-term empowerment to happen, both household gender equality and increased economic opportunities need to be met. As such, mobile phones and their association with empowerment have to be studied and understood as situated. Furthermore, political opportunities and agency need to be considered in such studies. The women in our study, even though they have access to earning a livelihood and collectively organize in so-called saving circles, conceived of themselves as not able to change the situation they were in. Hence what we witnessed among market women in Kampala was a constant struggle to meet their practical everyday needs, not an empowered group of women who saw themselves as agents in changing their life situations. In fact, one of the first things these women asked us was how we could help them, how our study could help improve their situations. We guess it cannot, more than putting the spotlight on their situation and their general feeling of powerlessness.

We thus concur with Sengupta (2013, p. 286) that the idea of empowerment as predicated by income-generating activities, has little impact on entrenched power relations. Mobile phone practices, while making them less dependent on men, have not helped these women to pull themselves out of poverty (see also Tawah, 2013). As our study has shown, their meager earnings gave them sole responsibility for the children and household as men relinquished their responsibilities.

Hence, our study shows that while allowing women to become less dependent on their men, their market work largely makes them responsible for not only their own life situation, but also their children’s. This engagement in their own businesses is perhaps a sign of fading gender roles (as suggested by Hoyman, 1987, p. 76). However our study reveals that necessity and a sexist division of household responsibility urged these women to work. Putting women as solely responsible for the household and the upbringing of children—children that were considered pivotal for women to be regarded as such by the Ugandan society—pushed them into the informal economy to provide for their own and their children’s living. What this does is exonerate men from taking any responsibility either for the household or for the children they have conceived. As women located in the informal economy, they have little support from formal structures. While public primary and secondary education is free in Uganda, scholastic material such as books, school uniforms, shoes, and all extra items have to be bought by parents. For many parents, especially single ones, paying for these materials is a cost they cannot afford. Leaving women with the full responsibility for children and household, pushes them into the informal economy. Patriarchy and neo-liberal opposition of the welfare state and state interventions are an unholy alliance.

We thus conclude that empowerment is not a constant. Much literature promotes the empowerment through communication technologies as a stable continuum. The market women we interviewed and observed, instead point to a situated concept that acquires new shape and form depending on the mobile phone, the network, and the social relations that surround the communication practices.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been supported by the Åke Wiberg Foundation and the Knut & Alice Wallenberg foundation.

Notes

Author biographies

Jakob Svensson is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he directs the international MA programme in Digital Media and Society. His research focuses on two main areas: political participation on digital media platforms and mobile communication in developing regions. In the latter, Svensson has taken part in organizing three of the four Mobile Communication for Development conferences (M4D 2010, 2012, and 2014). He recently edited a volume for IGI Global on Promoting Social Change and Democracy Through Information and Communication Technology with Professor Vikas Kumar from the Asia Pacific Institute in New Delhi. Svensson is currently engaged in a research project involving empowerment and mobile phones among market women in Uganda with Dr Caroline Wamala-Larsson.

Caroline Wamala-Larsson contributes to the practical and academic development of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) as the Director of the HumanIT Research Centre, senior lecturer at the Centre for Gender Research at Karlstad University in Sweden, and as a Programme Manager with the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER). Located in the Gender and Technology discipline, Wamala-Larsson’s research focuses on the use of ICT4D and gender as a point of analysis in ICT4D use. Her research acknowledges the mutual construction of gender and technology, contributing a deeper understanding of the cultural embeddedness of ICT. Her latest publications include “I Have to Give an ‘I Can’ Attitude: Gender Patterns in Beeping Practices in Uganda,” published in SAGE Open (2013) and “Theater, Gender, and Development: Merging Traditional and New Media to Address Communication Challenges in Uganda” that appeared in Signs 39(4), 2014. Wamala-Larsson recently edited together with other colleagues a volume on Mobile Participation: Access, Interaction and Practices published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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