Parenting and money making: Sex work and women’s choices in urban Uganda

Abstract

Based upon detailed life histories of 96 Ugandan sex workers, this article documents the pathways women take into prostitution through marital separation and the subsequent need to support children via rural-urban migration to obtain wage work in Kampala. The money women receive from selling sex and other work helped them to independently pay for their housing children’s school fees, and food for their family without receiving support from partners. In their narratives women portrayed themselves as mothers, wives, partners, friends and workers with self-esteem and the hope of improvement in their lives through their own efforts.