Khat in East Africa: Taking Women Into or Out of Sex Work?

Abstract

Women's drug use is often associated with sex work as a means of raising money for consumption. Similarly, in Kenya and Uganda, journalists, the general public and aid agencies associate female consumption of the stimulant drug, khat (Catha edulis), as pulling women into prostitution. In contrast to Yemen and Ethiopia, these views are expressed by people living in areas where there are no rituals or traditions of female khat consumption. This paper presents data from a study carried out in Kenya and Uganda in 2004 and 2005 that documents that the majority of women engaging in khat chewing are not sex workers. Frequently, however, women who retail khat are often assumed by men to be sexually immoral. The role of women in the retail and wholesale khat trade is examined. The stigma attached to selling khat is linked to the overall situation of independent women in East Africa and the place of commercial sex in urban life.

Keywords:

• women
• khat
• sex work

Notes

²Khat and ‘gat’ are the same thing.

³There is the need to distinguish between pharmacological action and one's “drug experience,” which is the outcome of the complex interactions among the chemically active substance, the user and where it is being used, or site. [Zinberg, N. E. (1984). Drug, set, and setting: the basis for controlled intoxicant use. New Haven: Yale University Press.] Chief Editor's note.

⁴The data presented here were collected as part of an ESRC Award (RES-143-25-0046) to the author, The Khat Nexus: trans-national consumption in a global economy.

¹The reader is referred to the “rational addiction” literature [Vuchinich, R. E., and Heather, N. (Eds.) (2003). Choice, behavioral economics and addiction. New York: Pergamon Press], which is based upon choice theory and continues to be almost totally overlooked in the more traditional substance use intervention literature. Chief Editor's note.