Abstract:
This study set out to investigate the effects of gendered land ownership, access,
control and use with specific focus on the Gusii of Kenya. The study was thus
problematized in terms of the imperative to seek an answer to the fundamental
question; What accounts for the marginal position of women among the Gusii in
relation to access, control and use of land? The objectives guiding the study were; to
analyse the relationship between pre-colonial land tenure systems and gender
relations, establish the effects of colonial land policies on gender relations and to
examine gender rights in relation to land ownership. The study site was Gusiiland the
current Kisii County, which is one of the 47 counties in Kenya in conformity with the
new constitution of Kenya 2010 which created the devolved system of governance.
The study targeted one hundred oral respondents aged sixty years and above. The
study was conducted within the context of agency and property rights theories that
permitted the historicization of the land question through the pre-colonial, colonial
and post-colonial epochs. The historical research design was employed in the study.
Consequently, the data informing the study derived from both primary and secondary
sources. Primary sources entailed the conduct of oral interviews with target
participants identified through snowball sampling technique. Individual views and
perspectives were subject to an authentication process through group oral interviews
and discussions. In addition, a wide range of documents derived from the Kenya
National Archives constituted a key component of primary sources. These included
district and provincial annual reports, quarterly reports and official commentary from
the department of agriculture. The data derived from primary sources was used either
to corroborate or critique information attributed to secondary sources such as books,
dissertations and government publications. Such analysis of primary and secondary
data yielded both quantitative and qualitative data thematically organized in a
historical narrative. The study found out that the dynamics of Gusii societal
organization during the pre-colonial period guaranteed greater security to women as
pertains to land access, control and use. Conversely, it also emerged from the study
that the onset of colonialism destabilized and distorted the workings of Gusii
traditional structure, thereby occasioning the vulnerability of women in relation to
land. The study also established that the consolidation of capitalist ethos wrought by
the entrenchment of the market economy continuously exacerbated the
marginalization and vulnerability of Gusii women in matters of land access and use.
The study concluded that far from being reduced to mere passive victims of the
resultant constricted economic space, Gusii women have always been positively
responsive through the design of multiple coping strategies cumulatively empowering
them to remain shapers of their own economic destiny.