In trying to determine the age at which women reached majority (if they did so at all) and thus legally existed independently of fathers and husbands, administrators set out on a path fraught with contradictions. Whether as a university professor, at the helm of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) and the GBM, in parliament, or as a UN ambassador, Wangari Maathai worked for the common good. She is the author of African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–50 and Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, both available from Ohio University Press.

This study is largely concerned with the dynamics of the squatter presence in the White Highlands and with the initiative, self-assertion and resilience with which they faced their subordinate position as labourers. Legislation tried to prevent child marriage, encourage demonstrations of women's consent, introduce formal registration and assign guardianship of children to widows in case of a husband's death. It is unsurprising that the following chapter is given over to bitterly resisted attempts to restrict or prohibit clitoridectomy.Continuing her fight for social justice, Maathai joined the pro-democracy movement and focused on overthrowing Moi's authoritarian regime. Kanogo traces the squatters' increasing poverty and disillusion and their involvement in Mau Mau, particularly that of the women.

She shows how colonial administration, missionaries, and indigenous customs variously used clitoridectomy, dowry, marriage, maternity, and motherhood to control African women. To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax). In the past, communities had practiced shifting cultivation to enable some of the land to lie fallow and thereby regain its fertility, but this was no longer possible during the colonial period. Within a broad analysis of colonial oppurtunities for physical, social and educational mobility, Kanogo 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. The author follows the story of the squatters farming the land in the 'White Highlands' at first unused by the Europeans.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It is hoped to depict the prevailing male stereotypes of women; how men manipulated these; and the way in which women conformed to — and in some cases overcame — such stereotypes by creating new female images and by adopting new roles during the struggle. This chapter sets up the argument throughout the book that the tentative and fluid nature of the colonial state unintentionally opened up new avenues for women’s self-assertion.

Since her family could afford the cost of private education, she obtained a Catholic education in Kenya and continued her postsecondary studies at Benedictine College in the United States, thanks to a sponsorship from the African American Student Foundation and the Kennedy Airlift program.A constant thread throughout the book is that the examination of individual life cases reveals the complex and multifaceted nature of Kenyan women’s mobility and self-assertion. Kanogo conveys the interconnectedness between Maathai's quest for environmental justice and her efforts to achieve gender equality in Kenya. Kanogo’s African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya traces the history of womanhood in Kenya amidst social, cultural, and economic changes in the period of colonial rule from 1900 to 1950.