African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya 1900-50

This is the most interesting general Kenyan social history that I have had the pleasure to read for many years. It fills a large gap in the colonial history of Kenyan women as they negotiated changes in the most domestic areas oftheir experience. - John Lonsdale, Trinity College, Cambridge


Within a broad analysis of colonial oppurtunities for physical, social and educational mobility, Kanogo Kanogo explores the history of African womanhood in colonial Kenya. She shows how African and British male authorities tried, with uncertain opinions and from different perspectives, to control female initiatives, and how, to very varying degrees, women managed to achieve increasing measures of control over their own lives. She examines the legal and cultural status of women, clitoridectomy, dowry, marriage, maternity and motherhood, and formal education. By following the effects of the all-pervasive ideological shifts that colonialism produced in the lives of women, the study investigates the diverse ways in which Kenyan women's positions were diminished, or enhanced, or placed in ambiguous predicaments by the consequences, intended and unintended, of colonial rule.

North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP