Paper short abstract:

Little scholarly attention has been given to women representation in Uganda’s pre-1986 legislatures; to redress that, I explain how and why women were excluded from negotiations and state-building structures in post-Amin transitional government (1979-1980).

Paper long abstract:

This paper exemplifies how and why women exclusion occurred in discourse and practice in post-Amin’s transitional government (1979-1980). With Idi Amin’s fall in April 1979, Ugandans got an opportunity to start again. 1979-80 was a period of opportunities, a state-building moment that forged institutional and political pathways for the years to come. The formation of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) and the National Consultative Council (NCC) were attempts at state building guided by the famous “Moshi spirit” of unity and democracy. However, despite the UNLF rhetoric that extended to women, all the NCC members selected at Moshi were men. Moreover, when it came to expanding the NCC, both the process of the nomination and the attitudes of the “electorates” who chose new members ensured that all but one of the 60 were men. Building on evidence from primary and secondary sources, the chapter argues that apart from espousing women representation, UNLF structures did not create space for women’s opinion, as unity and democracy were imagined in terms of consensus among elite men. It concludes that women played a very limited role in the NCC legislature despite the UNLF members plans for special representation of women in their interim government.

Key words: Gender, NCC, Exclusion, Representation, UNLF