Ads about bus stop harassment and 'bonus wives' normalise sexism

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/01/ugandan-ads-bus-stop-harassment-bonus-wives-normalise-sexism

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Uganda’s leading telecom company MTN has launched a new advert. It depicts a scene at a city bus stop, which in Uganda we call a stage.

A man approaches the stage, where two women are sitting on benches, one either end. Before he takes his seat between them, he launches into some forced conversation with one of the women reading a magazine. Before the woman responds, the man moves closer to her. The second woman looks on, perhaps just curious, but perhaps concerned.

“Pleased to meet you,” says the man. The woman remains silent; it’s a one-man show. The man starts showing off, using Google Voice to search for the name of “this lovely lady”. When he asks if her name is Wikipedia, the woman finally responds, asking Google Voice: “How do I chase away this man?” Viewers are then invited to fall in love, get on the internet and buy a new smartphone.

Following the recent introduction of a social media tax, roughly 35% of Ugandans use the internet. With smartphone connections rapidly expanding in most African countries, mobile telecoms companies in Uganda face cut-throat competition. As a result, the media advertising industry is flourishing as corporations strive to outdo one another.

Depictions of women that turn on outmoded stereotypes have long endured, unquestioned. One telecoms firm even called on men to get an extra wife as part of their bonus package. This sexist advert was challenged. But many, like MTN’s bus stop exchange, are warmly received.

Such marketing plays on societal expectations about what a woman will or should put up with. The MTN advert is one of many in which a woman is reduced to an object, with little voice or agency. Even when she’s accosted, she has to smile back. While it is intended to be humorous, it’s not funny for those who face street harassment and intrusion on a routine basis.

Uganda’s urban growth rate, estimated at 5.2%, is among the highest in the world. The number of people living in urban areas is expected to rise from 6.4 million in 2014 to 22 million by 2040.

While this rapid urbanisation means more access to opportunities, it comes with challenges. From the largely safe environs of rural Uganda, young Ugandans are suddenly thrust on to city streets. For young women, the safety concerns are enormous.

Street harassment is a daily reality for young Ugandan women. When you leave your home, you have to deal with unwanted advances, catcalls, lewd remarks, accostment and inappropriate touches, all in the public eye. Women shopping in markets and other central parts of the city must spend much of their time pushing away men who freely and loudly encroach on their bodies, time and space.

Experiences of street sexual harassment are common among most young women. They are an extension of a culture of male entitlement to women’s bodies that is firmly upheld by societal norms, ones that we see exposed across the world with the #MeToo movement.

There remains huge inequality between women and men in terms of power and how one occupies public spaces. The response to the concerns about this advert say much about what men deem appropriate.

Many men wonder how they are supposed to live if they don’t have the right to speak to a woman like the man in that advert. Such individuals seem to accept the behaviour depicted, taking the view that anyone against the advert is against them. Increasingly, though, women are breaking the silence and telling their experiences – even in the face of a backlash.

Last year, Makerere University in Kampala was forced to institute a committee to investigate sexual harassment within the university. The institution, Uganda’s oldest university, has mulled over installing closed-circuit television cameras around the campus. The committee chair, renowned feminist scholar Sylvia Tamale, has persistently urged institutions and the country at large to tackle “environmental sexual harassment”, which remains a big problem for women in public settings.

Outrage over use of 'Miss Curvy' beauty pageant to promote Ugandan tourism

Though sexual harassment is pervasive in Uganda, it is only referred to in one law – a small section of the Employment Act – and is not captured in official data on gender-based violence.

Not long ago, parliament almost passed a law policing women’s dressing. Debate around the anti-mini skirt bill highlighted men’s power to humiliate women in public spaces whom they deemed inappropriately dressed.

Earlier this year, Uganda’s minister of tourism Godfrey Kiwanda caused an uproar when he called for women’s bodies to be added on tourism sites while supporting a Miss Curvy beauty contest.

In a society where most men feel an entitlement to women’s bodies, and feel they can act upon that sense of entitlement, the MTN advert is distasteful, further normalising the harm young women face in public.