Engendering Land access, control and ownership in Kisii County, Kenya 1895 - 1970

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.