The fluidity of patriarchy Resisting Dutch gender interventions in Uganda and Zambia

In this PhD thesis, Jeroen Lorist explores how a new category for intervention, the ‘good African man,’ has emerged and proliferated within Dutch development thinking and practice in the first decades of the 21st century. It critiques the morally superior stance and elided racialist norms of such interventions, but also examines how gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) interventions are adapted, circumvented, and navigated by different groups in Uganda and Zambia, often to their own benefit. The fluidity of patriarchy refers to processes in which traditions are dynamically adapted by powerful big men to stay in power, but also to the multiplicity of patriarchy. For example, masculinist leadership can also be practiced by powerful women in the Dutch development space. Patriarchy, therefore, exists in many dynamic shapes and forms in different places within the international gender equality assemblage. With the current major cuts in Dutch development funding and the global anti-gender movement, insight into the fluidity of patriarchy within global SRHR could inform the building of new, more equitable SRHR futures when the progressive wind starts blowing once again.