Expanding ‘civil society’: Women and political space in contemporary Uganda

This essay argues that the notion of civil society needs to be expanded by widening the political space it occupies in order to provide a clear break from the gender‐biased legacy that ‘civil society’ currently carries with it. It shows how notions of civil society based on Western liberal theory have been appropriated to describe aspects of African associational life in ways that have uncritically accepted a gendered public—private distinction which is problematic even in the Western context. Drawing on examples from Africa with a particular focus on Uganda, the essay argues that popular definitions of civil society fail in at least three dimensions and suggests that only when we expand our understanding of the political can we fully appreciate the importance of struggles in which the protagonists are members of non‐dominant sectors of society.