Uganda student ‘barred over skirt length’ Posted at 10:30

A Ugandan student, Joaninne Nanyange, has written a long Facebook post detailing how she was stopped at the entrance to her faculty by two women, one apparently dressed in a police uniform.

She says the uniformed woman asked her to pull her skirt down as far as it would go: I burst into laughter. Her request didn’t make sense. She insisted, quite seriously. I told her that was the farthest my skirt could go and there was no need to pull it.”

I was shocked. Yes. Shocked. Seeing the bewilderment on my face, the two women laboured to explain. Apparently, skirts like mine attract the boys and men that we study with and bar them from concentrating. So they could not be allowed!”

 Ms Nanyange goes on to link the sexual harassment of women with a broader culture in the country of dictating what women can wear.

How can we be angry with boda boda men attacking and undressing women for wearing short things when we have institutions that we hold to higher levels of understanding and responsibility fostering cultures that say women are only as appropriate as men say they are?

 She says men should be made responsible for controlling their sexual urges, if they really are as out of control as some in Uganda appear to believe:

I Work hard, and I manage to pay the millions of shillings required for LDC’s tuition. But I can’t access the campus to attend my classes because when ‘my brothers’ look at my knees and legs, they will get erections.”