Feminist Studies
Women’s Organising for Self Improvement in Colonial and Post Colonial Kenya: A Historical Analysis
This paper analyses historically the engagement of women in development
through the women‟s organizations in Kenya since 1945. in the 20th century there
were various manifestations of women‟s organisations namely women‟s clubs,
women‟s self help groups operating under various umbrella bodies, and other nongovernmental
ones. These have received scholarly attention since 1970s in the form
of the study of women organising into self help groups particularly as the academic
establishment increasingly responded to the impact of the international women‟s
movement. As Nasimiyu (1987) says the nature and functions of women‟s organising
in groups have been analysed in a variety of rural and urban contexts in Kenya with
a number of different interpretations of the subject. Organisations among women
are, therefore, no longer exclusively conceived as part of a private world that is
dissociated from political life and public purpose (March and Taqqu 11). These
organizations have sought to give voice to women and are part of Kenyan women‟s
history that need to be corporately dealt with by Kenyan Historians.
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