Women’s organising for self-improvement in colonial and post-colonial Kenya: A historical analysis

Research on women’s activities and interests was spurred by the feminist movement in the 1960s and has sustained its recognition as a genuine field of investigation. Since early 1970s national and international attention has focused on women. In Africa, research on women grew intermittently in the wake of the global feminist movement and despite numerous setbacks it has grown incredibly. It was particularly boosted after the UN Declaration of Women’s Decade in 1975. The declaration of the UN decade for women produced both rhetoric from government officials and feminist leaders about women’s significance in all aspects of life and determined efforts to improve women’s education, economic situation, social status and political participation. Consequently, discussions by and about women began to take centre stage and continues to play an important role in contemporary political debate. This means that what was considered the women question in the 19th Century became a central or core issue in the 20th Century. The potential and actual contribution of women to political, cultural, and socio-economic development of Africa and their special needs and problems in development have been reiterated in the expanding literature on women.[1]There is generally an expanded database on the operation of women in society and group context internationally. Such publications have increased as the production of social knowledge on women proliferates. In Kenya women are currently remaining in several research agenda and efforts of many scholars have made the literature on gender and women to increase enormously. Although it is recognised that women are agents of historical change and objects of policy consideration there is still paucity in what can be considered her story in Africa and Kenya specifically.