Women's Violent Crime in Uganda

More Sinned Against than Sinning

This book examines how Ugandan society, the law and women's violent crime interrelate. The author draws on her own research conducted with women prisoners and women living in polygamous families, to provide detailed individual accounts of violent crime committed by women. She considers these accounts in social context, exploring the circumstances in which women become involved in homicide and assault, and establishes what patterns and social relationships may predispose women to homicide, and violence in general. She further discusses women's crime in the context of debates on rationality and pathology, and gender assumptions about women and crime, arguing that theories of crime must take account of gender. In these aspects this book goes some way in redressing the tendency of criminologists and sociologists in the African context to regard crime as a male phenomenon and women as victims; and so neglect the study of the nature and causes of female criminality, and what it represents for African women's resistance to oppression.

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