Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002)
ISSN: 1530-5686
INDIGENOUS GENDERED SPACES: AN EXAMINATION OF KENYA
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Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002) ISSN: 1530-5686 INDIGENOUS GENDERED SPACES: AN EXAMINATION OF KENYA |
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D. J. Chandler and Njoki Wane
Look at this shamba (farm). I had coffee trees from the top of the hill to the river. Every year the coffee co-operative told us the same story. There is no market for your coffee. The competition is high and prices are low. We could not uproot the trees for crop rotation. The government agents told us growing coffee was the way to progress. We were not allowed to plant maize or beans in between the coffee trees. After many years of no money and no food, we decided to cut down all the coffee trees and leave a few for our use… The women were the first ones to cut the coffee trees. Somehow everybody in our community followed our example…it is like we knew we had to do something to save ourselves and also the soil. Many women and men got sick from the pesticide sprays and those fertilizers we had to buy from the coffee board…I guess we had to do what we thought was best for our community (Muthoni, 1998, as told to Wane).
Muthoni, an Embu elder, from rural Kenya, offers insight into how to develop gender sensitive agricultural policies (Achieng, 2000) and sustainable practices or complete education in Kenya. Here we explore Kenyan rural women’s indigenous mind-set by infusing some of their ideas into academic frameworks with the underlying philosophy of ecological restoration and social justice. Embu women in this article, depicted as rural female elders, struggle to retain traditional sustainable practices amidst severe environmental degradation, misguided development projects and postcolonial government interventions, in an effort to feed themselves and their families. We do not present the data and analyses here as universal or comprehensive for indigenous people, African women or feminist perspectives. Also, the terms indigenous and gendered spaces are defined generally, leaving in-depth discussions outside the scope of this paper. Indigenous generally refers to those who live on and work with the land of their ancestors and gendered spaces implies the place and discourse of women’s work. Our attempt here is to use feminist voices from inside and outside of academy, a somewhat unusual task.
As the authors of this article span two different geographical locations and identities themselves, so do the perspectives presented here. Njoki N. Wane, educated both in Kenya and Canada, offers insights from her rural upbringing as an Embu as well as field research among the women in Kenya. DJ Chandler, an Anglo American, brings to the discussion knowledge from her anthropological training and research in West Africa and her commitment to working with and learning about indigenous ways of bringing environmental and social justice to the forefront of development and education praxis. Our views as scholars blend to encourage environmentalists, farmers, scientists, policymakers, educators, feminists and leaders within and beyond indigenous communities to initiate discourse to ensure ethical practices that centralize the voices, spirits and knowledges of women.
This section introduces Embu rural women, found in Wane’s ethnographic research carried out in 1998, as a supplement to her dissertation on Embu food processing practices (see Nathani, 1996). Exemplified by Muthoni above, much has already been lost or destroyed in Kenya. Yet, the elders offer knowledge and perspectives richly endowed with what kinds of practices and meanings flourish, not as mere remnants of the past, but as rudiments of sustainability and hope for the future.
The rural Embu women are in tune with their environment. How do we know this? During Wane’s research, it was common to see a woman walking through her farm and talking to herself. When Wane asked some of her participants such as Waitherero, Maitu, or Gachoki about this practice, they were quick to reply “how else would you know what is happening to your crops or soil? This practice of talking to plants was an everyday ritual for most elderly women in rural Embu. Maitu put it very eloquently:
Njoki, for almost three years we have had drought. Then last season, it started raining and rained and rained. The floods carried the good soils, uprooted trees and took some of our cattle…when I touch the soil or talk to the plants I am asking Ngai (Creator in Embu/Kikuyu) to bless the soil and the plants.
Many women who participated in this research frequently gave thanks to Ngai for life and “gifts from the land.” They would touch the soil and plants to check for moisture and determine daily weather. Their mothers and grandmothers passed down this knowledge to them. For Gachoki and Waitherero, this is how they maintain a strong connection to their land. Gachoki elaborated:
When we were growing up, everything was green. I cannot remember my mother worrying about droughts or floods. But these days, every season is different from the other. One season you have food, the next season you have no food. When I touch the soil or talk to the plants then give thanks to Ngai, it is because I know the answers to the drought and famine is beyond my neighbours or myself.
These quotes accentuate the significance of sustaining connections with the land, the environment and with Creator. It was apparent that women cared for what made up their everyday environment. During Wane’s research, women made use of what northerners would refer to as recycling. Empty cola bottles were used as containers for paraffin, cooking oil, sugar, salt, or lard from cows or lamb. Metal tins were converted to cups for drinking water, tea or porridge or as paraffin lamps. The occasional newspaper that found its way to the village was used to wrap meat. Community shopkeepers sold empty containers to women who would use them to fetch water or as storage for their foods. Marigu explained:
In the village nothing goes to waste…the cabashes may be used for fetching water or for storage purposes. If for any reason they break, the pieces could be carved into spoons or plates. As for the metal or tin containers – we use them for everything… When these containers are new, we use them for fetching water and once they are old and rusty, we use them for storing grain…In this community, whoever has more than one gives out the extra to their neighbours. We do not have problem of waste like in the cities. When we sweep our houses we spread “the dirty” in the shamba. When we peel potatoes or bananas, we feed our cattle with the peels. We do not buy food in tins. If we go to the market, we take our baskets and the shopkeeper empties whatever we buy in our baskets or containers.
All Embu women integrated an environmental consciousness into their daily lives, but many remained concerned with the low yields from their farms and other environmental or agricultural issues. Except for Gaka. Many village people thought Gaka had some secret she refused to share with other farmers. When Wane asked about her secret, she replied:
My farm is me. Everything I do I always think of my small farm. When I wash the containers I do not throw away the water, I put it in that container, then early in the morning I go and sprinkle the water. When I sweep my house I hip everything there (pointing to a corner) and after the harvest I carry in small bundles and spread it – then mix it when I prepare the farm for the next season. I listen to my intuition. When I wake up in the morning, I check the sky – if it is going to be hot, I do not sprinkle the water – I wait until evening…
There is water scarcity in many rural communities in Kenya. Gaka makes use of whatever amount she has by reusing it several times before she finally throws it out. She made an effort to ensure that water and the manure were evenly distributed.
As a result, ecosystems are sustained, and the biodiversity and conservation of local plants and animals continue as part of the Embu’s balanced way of life. Yet, the Embu and others in Kenya have had much of their environment and ecological practices thwarted by colonization and postcolonial development practices.
Currently, Kenya is in the midst of another terrible drought affecting over 80 percent of the population (Achieng, 2000). Additionally, as with many indigenous women who lead a subsistence life in Asia, Africa or South America, fuelwood procurement for cooking and heating remains an important environmental and development issue. Although many Embu women may remember when their environments were less degraded and barren, younger women may not.
Below is a discussion of fuelwood and then development. What we, the authors, would like to imagine is a team of Embu elders sharing their views and knowledge with a team of educators, policymakers, non-governmental organization workers and researchers. Although Wane is Embu herself, she cannot speak for rural Embu elders or indigenous women who farm for their food. Further, any researcher, activist or educator who is committed to justice for indigenous people must know the history of development from a multiplicity of perspectives and struggle, too, with issues of environmental justice and the need for higher yields, improved irrigation methods and reforestation.
“Firewood is the center of life because it is used to prepare food, the main factor in life” (Riley & Brokensha, 1988, quoting a Mbeere woman).
In Africa and elsewhere, the collection of fuelwood for household use is almost exclusively, at least for the most part, women’s work (Fortmann, 1997). The following provides an overview of fuelwood concerns in Kenya, including the colonial disruption of tree tenure and case studies of women in maldevelopment. Rural indigenous women in Kenya continue to experience scarcity issues in relation to fuelwood procurement for their household use, which includes issues related to significant environmental strain, demanding workloads, health and nutrition concerns and the ignored specifics of knowledge and use requirements. Reforestation programs and/or tree planting schemes often disseminated through government agricultural extension workers or rural development projects funded by non-governmental agencies attempt to address the fueldwood crisis, but to little avail. What do Embu women think of these failures? Muthoni captures this succinctly during her interview with Wane in August of 1998.
I am not sure whether our government or extension workers understand the pain of having to spend hours and hours searching for firewood. What do you tell your children when you cannot prepare meals for them, not because you are lazy, but because all the trees have been cleared? Many times the government blames the rural people, but I think it is our joint responsibility to search for ways of dealing with firewood dilemma.
Muthoni clearly perceives unfair blame for the “fuelwood dilemma” and frames it as an obstacle to secure food and nutrition for her family that is the “joint responsibility” of the government, educators and rural women to solve. Tragically, after thirty years of intervention attempts, the problems have only increased.
According to conservation experts, fuelwood consumption in Africa has doubled since 1950 (Wallmo, 1998) with the demand for fuelwood in Kenya outstripping the supply by at least 4 % per year (Wamukonya, 1995). In Kenya, woodfuel accounts for about 70 - 75 % of the total energy used (Wamukonya, 1995; Riley & Brokensha, 1988) which includes both fuelwood for cooking and heating in the rural areas and charcoal for the urban areas. In many rural areas of Kenya, about 90% or more of the energy for household use as well as for most cottage industry, which includes fish-smoking, brick-burning, pottery-making, beer-brewing, tobacco-curing as well as schools or clinics (Riley & Brokensha, 1988) depends on wood fuel.
In 1985, demand for wood fuel energy was frequently cited as the most common cause of deforestation in developing countries, at least in western literature and languages (Allen & Barnes, 1985). Today feminists see this thinking as a backlash from the oil crisis promoted by the World Bank and the western popularization of Erik Eckholm’s Fuelwood: The World’s Energy Crisis which claimed fuelwood consumption in the south contributed to global deforestation (linked to global warming). Eckholm popularized the belief that rural indigenous women caused global warming by collecting wood for fuel which prompted an expansive development blitz to curtail indigenous African women’s use of wood for cooking and heating. As briefly demonstrated below, this costly pandemonium failed to result in any sustainable changes largely due to the lack of integration of women’s indigenous ecological knowledge or awareness of women’s gendered spaces and practices.
Now most reject Eckholm’s false assertion and acknowledge that fuelwood consumption for household use plays a minor, even negligible, role in deforestation, compared to farming, pasture and grazing land, timber, logging, housing and charcoal production, whereas a few contend that fuelwood gathering contributes to soil erosion and land degradation directly (Soussan, 1991; Riley & Brokensha, 1988). It is important to note that women do not typically fell trees for fuelwood, but men typically fell trees for charcoal sales or use (Fortmann, 1997). Also, the workloads of women who collect fuelwood have dramatically increased, especially in areas of drought or intense desertification, which places increased burdens on household maintenance, food production, child health and survival (Waumkonya, 1995; Ngugi, 1988; Agarwal, 1984; Fleuret & Fleuret, 1979).
“Women as environmental destroyers” campaigns generated from economists and mainstream development agencies (Hyman, 1994, Cline-Cole, et al, 1990) continue given that some believe women contribute to deforestation indirectly through overpopulation (which leads to the increase of land clearing and pressure on agricultural production) and misuse of natural resources (Brown, 1999; Bussmann, 1996). Issues of resource management and forestry for women in Kenya include a complex history of colonialism, paternalism, omission, oppression, miseducation and maldevelopment. Now, our concerns turn, through case study examples, to how conceptions of knowledge become appropriated and deployed in environmental reforestation campaigns (Brosius, 2001) and, consequently, fail to meet rural women’s needs or incorporate indigenous ecological knowledges. First, a brief history of fuelwood and rural women in Kenya.
From Chirui’s 1996 dissertation, the Agikuyu ethnic group, Iruri-Kiamariga people, lives in the mountainous region of the eastern highlands of Kenya where the ecosystem varies considerably within a very short distance. Indigenous land tenure and natural resource management systems of the Agikuyu people responded to this ecological particularism, by ensuring that every household had access to plots in diverse micro-ecosystems in the area. Each household had multiple plots scattered in different areas. Without misuse or severe weather conditions, this land fragmentation ensured food abundance, many food varieties and balanced ecosystems (Chirui, 1996:5).
During pre-colonial Kenya, land was communally owned. During the colonial rule, the colonial government allocated themselves, which they referred to as White Islands. The colonial government had introduced individual land ownership. Demarcation of land and title deeds became part of people’s lived reality. Many people were dispossessed of their community land and were denied user rights when the European settlers legitimated their ownership through the colonial legislation. The colonial government forced the dispossessed communities to move to villages (equivalent to reserves). In addition, the government introduced different types of taxes. The heads of families – mostly men – were required to pay the head tax in monetary terms. Cash economy was a new phenonmenon as it marked the beginning of migratory patterns in colonial Kenya. The men moved in search of work in white settlers plantations, leaving women behind to care for the family. The colonial land acts took communal land considered uncultivated and uninhabited by the British (Chirui: 1996: 6) from Kenyans and made it government property. However, the majority of land taken away from Kenyans was divided among white colonial farmers. Women did not have land or tree rights.
Before the Land Adjudication Acts in Kenya of the 1950s, collecting fuelwood was a free, communal act and there was little or no commercialization of fuelwood or charcoal (Riley & Brokensha, 1988). Mami (85 year old Embu woman) explained how demarcation of the land complicated women and children’s lives in rural Kenya.
When I was growing up all the trees in our neighborhood belonged to the community. Children could eat fruits from the fruit trees and women could “harvest” the branches for firewood. That changed with dividing of pieces of land between members of the same clan and men claiming ownership to the land through Title Deeds. (Wane’s interview with Mami, August, 1998).
In English law, whoever owns the land owns the trees, but that was not the case in traditional Kenya. In customary law, individuals did not have private rights to land, instead, a political group or lineage authority was response for ensuring all community members had fair access to the land. The fair allocation was done through clan lineage. Each clan was given specific areas and all the members, including the women who were married to members of the clan acquired land use. Before the colonial invasion, there was no landlessness. The concept was a colonial creation. Colonialism and the imposition of English land tenure and land-use patterns, disrupted indigenous practices and interfered with the free access to land use that many enjoyed through their lineage or marriage. These changes severely influenced natural resource management, agricultural practices and women’s access to fuelwood.
Documented examples of resistance exist, such as the Kikuyu, for example, who continued with some customary practices, including land and tree tenure differentiation (Dewees, 1995), but for the most part women’s participation in food production remained unrecognized by policymakers and development agenices until 1970 when Ester Boserup, a Danish economist, argued otherwise. After independence the push for economic development and the need for increased GNP and GDP, continued to exacerbate the destruction of forest resources.
The consequences of colonial land tenure legacy has impoverished many Kenyans. Many family members in rural Kenya who could not find gainful employment resorted to charcoal burning. Charcoal burning has contributed gravely to deforestation. As noted by Mutito:
My mother and my grandmothers are very opposed to charcoal burning. They have told Mwangi my husband that they will expose him next time the authorities come around. But what choices does he have? We have no other form of income. Our piece of the land is so small and it does not produce enough food to feed. I know when I participate in this business, I am ignoring my traditional teachings – to look after your environment. I am aware of the outcome of my husband’s business – what choices does he have, do we have?
Beginning in the 1970s charcoal production increased uncontrollably in the rural areas to meet the growing demand for fuel in the urban areas and export (Riley & Brokensha, 1988). During that decade, Kenya exported 96% of the total charcoal from Africa, mostly to the Middle East, estimated to be about 58,000 tons (Bussmannn, 1996). The government of Kenya in due course realized the grave environmental results of intensive charcoal production which, depending on the size or the species, produces only 5 to 20 bags of charcoal from each felled tree. Kenyatta spoke out against charcoal production and its impact on desertification when he instituted rules that required permission from the sub-chiefs and agreement to plant 2-5 trees to replace each one felled. This decree, however, promoted non-native species and was only marginally successful overall (Riley & Brokensha, 1988). Today, most forest products, mainly timber and firewood, remain within the country (Bussmann, 1996) although the phenomenal indigenous species deforestation of the 1970s has yet to be replenished.
Increasing deforestation and the decreased availability of indigenous species forces women to increase walking distances and daily workloads to find suitable fuelwood and/or decrease cooking needs and/or settle for less suitable or non-native species (Fleuret & Fleuret, 1978; Soussan, 1991; Fortmann, 1996). It is documented that most rural women will resort to alternative fuels when forced, such as agricultural residues or cow dung in dire emergencies, purchase fuelwood if cash is available, or engage in reforestation projects, if presented. One notable reforestation program originating in Kenya, the Greenbelt Movement, claims to have employed 50,000 women, and distributed over 10 million tree seedlings in Kenya alone since the early 1980s, with 80% reaching maturity (Wallace, 1993). We will turn again to this example in the conclusion. Another example, improved cookstoves, a focus of large-scale development funding in the 1980s, have not resulted in significant decreases of household energy needs, mostly due to the lack of appropriate technologies and integration of women’s preferences and knowledge (Crewe & Harrison, 1998; Gill, 1987). Although the cookstove fiasco is another failure of development to meet the needs of the women, the focus here returns to reforestation as a solution to deforestation.
Throughout the recent past, women’s knowledge of forestry, trees and fuelwood have been ignored, and, as will be exemplified by a few case studies, remains an endangered, sacred, but hopeful, place. Women’s knowledge of their environment often thrives within these gendered spaces of work. In the Tharaka district, Njiro (1999) found women and girls responsible for almost all food production and gathering duties, including searching for alternative sources of food in the wild. These duties have increased due to what Njiro calls the “modern division of labor” or out migrations of male household members combined with the increased burdens and losses from AIDS sicknesses and deaths. [The FAO recently estimated that the loss in agricultural labor caused by HIV/AIDS in Kenya during the last decade reached over 17% (de Haen, 2001) with young women aged 15 to 19 six times more likely to become infected than their male counterparts, in some areas of East Africa (Zewdie, 2001)]. The increase of women’s workloads has been the focus of much social science research (Fleuret & Fleuret, 1978; Soussan, 1991; Fortmann, 1996), but, unfortunately, little documentation exists on gendered knowledge in relation to fuelwood species preferences.
If data on Kenyan rural women’s relationships with and knowledge of trees are desirable, any detailed history of land and tree tenure without mention of gender differences, gender relations or women’s role in resource management greatly hinders such an analysis, as found in Dewees (1995) and others. Fortunately, many feminist researchers have reported on gender differences in access issues: land tenure, tree tenure; who plants what tree or bush where and when; marital status, age of woman, types of by-product or product utilization, the source of the seedling or planting and for commercial, cash or household use (Fortmann, 1997; Rocheleau, et. al., 1995; Rocheleau & Edmunds, 1997; Ngugi, 1988). During the last twenty years, many campaigns, generated from non-governmental organizations, government policies and international agencies, have attempted to address fuelwood shortages as part of “rural development schemes” for indigenous women, many of which have failed or partially failed. The campaigns have failed because women, neither consulted nor empowered, undergo what Paulo Freire (1970) called the “banking method” of education in his classic work Pedagogy of the Oppressed where learners are viewed as empty headed with existing knowledge ignored. This is illustrated in the following quote from Wane’s interview with Rukiri in August, 1998.
The government agents have been coming and ordering us to plant these trees or those trees. They have never asked me why what we planted two years or three years ago dried up – these agents do not know our soil (touching the soil), they do not know what will do well. Look at the eucalyptus – what have these trees done, dried up our land – that is why we call them – drinkers of the water – well, I guess because I am old and I have never been to your schools, you do not think I know anything about my land.
The issue of indigenous species versus non-native species is a paramount problem in the discussion of women’s rights to indigenous fuelwood species and access to adequate household energy to provide cooked food and heat for her family. After the destructive 1970s, many quick-growing (and thirsty) non-native tree species were planted in large scale reforestation projects by government and non-governmental programs with the eucalyptus a development favorite (Riley & Brokensha, 1988; Thomas-Slayter & Rocheleau, 1995) and now well-known fuelwood debacle (Agarwal, 1986). These serious mistakes provoke feminist political ecologists to ask: Who controls and who determines the rights over resources and rights to choose species for reforestation?
Rocheleau and Edmunds (1997) researched the Siaya District in Kenya for “gendered spaces,” where they examined the CARE Kenya Agroforesty Project. During the 1980s, this project explicitly aimed to solve deforestation and fuelwood shortage issues in Siaya as well as investigate land use for women long after the land reforms. The goal was to encourage women to grow trees and tree products for the market. According to Rocheleau and Edmunds (1997), this project not only defined tree nurseries (on communal property) as women’s workplaces, but also was the first in Kenya to submit to women species selecting trees according to their preferences for wood type, burning quality and by products, based on indigenous ecological knowledge.
In addition, the project disallowed eucalyptus, well known for its awful smell and incompetence for household use (Agarwal, 1986), but suitable for fence poles (mostly part of the male domain). Although many of the women successfully planted tree seedlings and kept ownership, the project “failed” since most women were not motivated to raise trees for commercial timber purposes and, instead, kept their favorite species for household fuelwood exclusively (Rocheleau and Edmunds, 1997).
In a similar study conducted by Rocheleau and others (1995), members of a newly settled area near Kenya’s Rift Valley Province called Pwani took part in a Participatory Rural Appraisal series of discussions and surveys. All women reported fuelwood scarcity. The wealthier women bought wood or charcoal while most other women bought sawdust or wood chips or depended largely on agricultural residues.
The researchers document the process and outcome of a community meeting to demonstrate the inextricable link between fuelwood and gender issues for Kenyan women. The goal of the meeting was to create a list of development priorities. One local woman suggested fuelwood as second on the list of priorities, just after water, which sparked long discussions and, finally, postponement of the decision until another meeting, without researchers present, could take place. The eventual outcome situated fuelwood as part of a “tree planting and tree protection” priority within sustainable agriculture and agroforesty, which earned it third place on the list (after the secondary school).
As Rocheleau and others (1995) suggest, this detailed description of gendered spaces (where women work, learn and share) proves that indigenous women, if given choices, would prioritize fuelwood specifically as a need despite the tendency for development projects, approaches and policies to perceive trees as “multi-use” and “multi-purpose” within “integrated” rural development and agroforestry schemes (Riley & Brokensha, 1988; Wamukonya, 1995; Dewees, 1995).
Environmental degradation is one of the major global concerns of the 21 st century, due to hundreds of years of damaging practices sponsored by enlightenment philosophies, unregulated global capitalism, and events of western scientific progress. With an unpredictable array of global dilemmas harmful to the biosphere and life forms, humans today confront the disturbing consequences of toxic, agricultural and industrial pollutants, increasing fossil fuel dependencies of a hegemonic political economy, rapid species and habitat loss, and widespread food and water scarcities. Despite the extent of the contaminations, biodiversity losses and injustices, there are some solutions to these major problems, some simple and ethical, but all require profound shifts in western perceptions, thinking, and values (Capra, 1996; Berry, 1999) and, ultimately, adjustments in consumption and waste patterns, especially in the north.
For thousands of years, ancient and traditional societies have viewed physical and biological environments as interlinked in a web of relationships with humans and non-humans, or what western science sometimes terms ecosystems (Berkes, et. al., 1998; Capra, 1996). Today, we find remnants of traditional values, beliefs and indigenous knowledge all over the world. There are two important reasons why now is an appropriate time for change in education and development for indigenous peoples. One, postmodern ruptures in western science philosophies provide space for the integration of ecosystems including indigenous (Smith, 1999) and/or gendered (Harding, 1986) concepts; and, two, indigenous knowledges embed views of ecosystems within linguistic, cosmic, spiritual and cultural meanings uniquely interdependent with specific bioregions, ethnicities (Berkes, et. al 1998; Capra, 1996; Maffi, 2001; Smith, 1999) and gendered spaces (Fortmann, 1997).
This may be the most favorable juncture in intellectual history to grasp the efficacy of redefining ecosystems through indigenous knowledge systems contained by linguistic diversities. “Every language is the custodian of its speakers’ cultural experiences, which are often the result of their many centuries of interactions with their physical milieu, inter- and intraethnic contacts, and relations with the supernatural world” (Batido, 2001:312).
Gendered spaces and biodiversity loss include the often-disregarded linkages between gender, language, the environment, knowledge and beliefs. Posey (2001) cites Krauss (1992) who estimates that 90 percent of the world’s languages will disappear within the 21 st century. With approximations of mass extinctions caused by human intrusion now occurring at accelerated rates of 1,000 species a year (Tuxill, 1999) or as many as a species an hour (Boff, 1995), indigenous language and knowledge systems will undoubtedly vanish, according to Maffi (2001), along with their respective bioregional animal and plant species. Some may see this as a pessimistic view, but the revitalization of indigenous languages (and knowledge) has found great success with certain groups, such as the Maori of New Zealand or the Navaho of the Southwestern United States. Indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, according to Cultural Survival, with small groups spread throughout the seven continents and various islands. According to activist Alan Durning, indigenous peoples:
possess, in their ecological knowledge, an asset of incalculable value: a map to the biological diversity of the earth on which all life depends. Encoded in indigenous languages, customs, and practices may be as much understanding of nature as is stored in the libraries of modern science (as quoted by Brosius, 1992: 7).
Who would gain if indigenous women’s ecological knowledge (and voices) merged with educational discourse and influenced policies, curriculum, teaching and learning? For instance, what would occur if indigenous tree species were valued within their long-standing linguistic, ecologic, spiritual and gendered contexts and combined, as specifically determined by the females involved, with existing or new appropriate technologies or innovations to address deforestation and desertification? How might securing household energy for those who do not depend on cash income for subsistence contribute to global recovery? What role do northern folks play in the survival of indigenous women and their cultures.
In this paper, we explore the fusing of postmodern western science with traditional forms of women’s cultural and environmental knowledge and innovations in order to create viable alternatives to extinction and devastation and move toward collaboratively defined sustainable ecosystems. We make a case that there is hope in the power of indigenous people’s knowledge and, with the appropriate international, national and local strategies and policies that hope could help provide for the earth’s renewal, but not without fundamental changes in the north. Postmodern sciences or complete education could arise from indigenous women’s knowledge of ecosystems found in gendered spaces to not only offer a viable future for indigenous families, but also new ways of thinking for western trained children and adults.
These gendered spaces, often hidden from outsiders and/or other genders, play an integral role in the process of resituating indigenous women’s knowledge, power and innovations as central to new sciences, hybridity and sustainability.
Feminist scholars, such as Teresia Hinga (1996), view the process of colonialization as fundamentally racist where the voices of African peoples went unheard, which ultimately disrupted indigenous environmental practices and relations with nature and led to the current environmental calamities. The hegemonic powers, however, perceive the cyclical droughts and famines, severe soil erosion and desertification, and widespread hunger or malnutrition in parts of Africa related to intrinsic factors such as overpopulation, political corruption, illiteracy and underdevelopment (Brown, 1999). Many feminists, Africanists and others debate that the exploitation of natural resources in the south for increased consumption in the north (McMicheal, 1996), which includes dominance of cash-, mono- and export crops over local food production (Chambers, 1983; Richards, 1985; Achieng, 2000), and persistent “blame the victim” attitudes in the white Anglo-Saxon protestant norm (Pai & Alder, 2001), perpetuate racist and sexist misconceptions about African development (James & Etim, 1999; Hinga, 1996) and profoundly contribute to chronic hunger and unstable food security.
For decades, feminists and development scholars in the north have written about their policy and practice concerns related to the role of women in development, education and resource management, particularly “Third World” or “developing world” women, often with attention to African women as the most “left out” or disrupted (Staudt, 1997; Costa & Costa, 1993; Goetz, 1997; Boserup, 1970). Recently, along with the inclusion of indigenous scholarship and the second and third waves of feminisms, interconnections between indigenous rural women and their environments have resurged to yield a envisioned transformational future. Feminists maintain that the so-called “women and environment approach” in development has merely tokenized women without their full inclusion or acknowledgment of their roles within complex geo-political or socio-economic processes (Barrett & Browne, 1995, Staudt, 1997; Synder & Tadesse, 1995). Moreover, modernist development projects continue to view women’s innovative practices as “untechnical” or “unnecessary” or, more commonly, women’s existing knowledge and practices merely remain “invisible” (Crewe & Harrison, 1998; Staudt, 1997; Fortmann, 1996; Njiro, 1999; Achieng, 2000).
Explicitly, many indigenous women remain objectified with silenced and/or obscured voices outside development or educational processes especially in relation to environmental or scientific knowledge. Education and development is something “done to them” (often, predictably, without long-term “success”) by overriding, hegemonic practices devoid of collaborative decision-making where women and girls are co-creators and co-constructors of their education, knowledge constructions, curriculum, teaching and learning. There are few exceptions (Njiro, 1999; Staudt, 1997, Crewe & Harrison, 1998). As gatherers of food, fuel, and herbal medicine, traditional indigenous women have profound knowledge of their local ecological contexts (Rasmussen, 1998), ignored by development, policies and educational practices (Merchant, 1995; Fortmann, 1986).
Although large development and education funding agencies, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have co-opted the language terms of “gender,” “empowerment,” “participatory development,” and “sustainability” into their program agendas, blaming poor, rural, indigenous women for environmental degradation, poverty and overpopulation continues (Hartmann, 1997; Townsend, et al, 1999). With strict adherence to social Darwinism and Malthusian principles, development fails because of women’s ignorance, prompting policymakers to view modern education (and population controls) as superior strategies to break the cycle of land degradation, hunger and large families (Silliman & King, 1999; Hartmann, 1997; Sittirak, 1997). Hence, national and international bodies of power push for western approaches to basic literacy and education skills for indigenous women (Hartmann, 1997; Brown, 1999) in colonial languages (Batibo, 2001) often asserting that educated women are less likely to give birth to lots of children or persist in non-income producing subsistence farming. Few development planners or policymakers would consider that subsistence farming might be the chosen vocation and preferred lifestyle for some women, if given such freedom.
Consequently, some environmental feminists have begun to reinvent language in order to reconceptualize and resituate indigenous women as resource managers central to transformational alternatives to dominant development, education and policy approaches (Braidotti, et al, 1997; Townsend, et al, 1999; Michel, 1993), but these voices remain muffled and external to the bulk of environmental discourse. For instance, indigenous knowledge literature currently focuses on issues related to intellectual property rights, biodiversity loss, language and power relations as well as relative issues of social and environmental justice (Maffi, 2001; Posey, 2001; Brosius, 2000), empty of gendered spaces (Warren, 1994; Shiva, 1997). Also, there is an emerging body of scholarship on African feminisms, which recognizes a fusion of “nature and culture” in “traditional conception of women’s roles” (Mikell, 1997:7-8), but favors the political and economic topics for women as it neglects the ecological and environmental. The crucial aim here is to include rural African women’s voices into the discourse without reductionism, essentialism or paternalism in practical or theoretical terms (Braidotti, et al, 1997) in order to document the value of indigenous practices, as gendered and ecological spaces, to reinvent sustainability.
In order to frame this complex strategy, ecofeminism offers some expanded parameters and worth by unifying gender and environmental issues. Notwithstanding the current overhaul in language and situatedness of all intellectual inquiries in this post-era, we find ecofeminism partly akin to African feminisms and postmodern theories as well as sensibly infused with anthropological and sociological analyses and field data. What is ecofeminism? Ecofeminism emerged in western scholarship in the 1970s with an increasing consciousness of the connection between some women, human rights and the exploitation of nature. French writer Francoise d’Eaubonne coined the term ecofeminisme in 1974, and called upon women to lead an ecological revolution to save the planet (Merchant, 1995:5). Familiar ecofeminists include Vandana Shiva, Susan Griffin, Francois d’Eubonne, Carolyn Merchant, Val Plumwood, Ynestra King, Karen Warren and others. Vandana Shiva (1988) argues that patriarchy (and colonialism) have annihilated women’s role in the construction of environmental knowledge and corrupted the notion of “scientific knowledge.” She maintains that indigenous knowledges of non-western peoples confront the “second coming of Columbus” by means of “piracy through patents” as well as devastating losses of creativity, biodiversity and individual rights (Shiva, 1997:1).
Many ecofeminists concur that control over and exploitation of nature and animals is linked to control over and exploitation of human beings (Plumwood, 1994). However, some western trained scientists, the majority who are male, view Shiva as the most discernible feminist environmentalist and openly dismiss “her” ecofeminism as part of the “anti-science” movement, especially acute within genetically modified food and world hunger discourse (Pinstrup-Anderson & Schioler, 2000; Borlaug, 2001). Even other ecofeminists, inside and outside Shiva’s home country of India, condemn her for sweeping accusations of development as patriarchy’s malevolent force which can only be overcome by a return to traditional practices in pre-colonial forms (Braidotti, et al, 1997). However, no one, not even Shiva, we suspect, would portend an absolute reversal of practices on a large scale, leaving the idealization of indigenous ways the most frequent, and plausible, weakness of her work. As with any theoretical or philosophical approach, fissures flank one another as scholars abide by the fashionable unwillingness to claim any one position as a definable stance.
With that in mind, ecofeminism, broadly defined, encompasses a not-so-embracing spectrum of feminist scholars who generally share the view that the exploitation of women in the hegemonic development or education process is related to western scientific notions from the enlightenment where nature, like women, are objects to control, manipulate and plunder, all false dichotomies to overcome. In practical terms, for example, Louise Fortmann (1986) reasons that many forestry development projects have failed because, based on western models and the general lack of females in western forestry, women are not perceived as foresters or considered knowledgeable about science, agriculture or ecology. Indigenous women’s knowledge of farming, forests and trees are often excluded and ignored despite the feminist or environmentalist movements of the late 20 th century (Njiro, 1999). Therefore, when foreign or foreign-trained experts intervene in development and education in Africa, based on western education models, women are left out of resource management or farming development processes. In addition, women’s “ways of knowing” do not seem “scientific” by western scientific standards, partly because of links to intuition or the supernatural, which exacerbates the exclusion of women’s voices in development and education.
Ecofeminists seek to justify spirituality as knowledge based and indispensable to concepts of ecology and resource management for indigenous peoples. Americans Susan Griffin and Mary Daly claim a spiritual union between women’s cultures and knowledges related to nature. Environmental anthropologists recognize the connections between culture and nature as inclusive of significant spiritual components as well. For example, British anthropologists Croll and Parkin (1992) explain that environmental issues in anthropology are “approached from the shadows: through ritual, beliefs in spirits and holy sites, ideas of human birth and regeneration, the common origins of humankind and animals, the consubstantiality of human and plant life, [and] the characterization of “natural” hazards as the wages of sin...(1992:4).”
Some feminist researchers who have conducted fieldwork to document women’s indigenous environmental knowledge find various notions of spirituality, taboos and beliefs which impact choices, preferences and knowledge constructions in relation to their local ecologies (Maag, 1997; Leach, 1992). Anthropological researchers have documented spiritual beliefs that appear “superstitious” or ritualistic on the surface, but reflect taxonomies of knowledge about medicinal, nutritional or scientific properties of plants, trees and animals when investigated through deep ecological methods to reveal what anthropologists call “ethnoscience.” For example, among the Kel Ewey confederation of Tuareg people in Niger, anthropologist Susan Rasmussen (1998) found herbal medicine women who trace local descent to natural substances of wood and believe:
Healing…is like a secret…it is transmitted to, belongs to, practiced by and managed by women, like property… Only women know trees…It is inherited from the mother of my mother. (Lala and Ana, elder herbalists of the Tuareg as documented by Rasmussen, 1998: 148).
Where do such powers and secrets come from? The Embu explain it as an endowment from Ngai (meaning “Creator” in Kiembu/Kikuyu). This is a living philosophy of harmony, respect and connectedness for nature, people, animals, through Ngai and the accompanying divine manifestations in women, men, and all nature. Ecofeminist frameworks include spiritual, cosmic and cultural relations with nature as entrenched in ecological knowledge.
Various detractors claim that ecofeminism spotlights the extremist, and flawed, view that women’s relationship with nature is closer than men’s due to biology, although ecofeminists do not explicitly state that differences in relations with nature are biologically determined or necessarily follow gender lines. We find the nature/culture thesis to be spurious. However, feminists in many fields today ultimately comment on the biology debate. In cultures where the sexual division of labor is profound and the lines between culture and nature become blurred, especially in the quest to overcome false dichotomies, biology quickly fades as an issue. Moreover, in the context of food production where many folks are seriously malnourished and hungry, the biological deterministic argument seems trivial, at best. What do Embu women think of all this? Probably very little. For most Embu women, their approach to life is to look after their families, eke a living from their land and at the same time take care of the environment. A sexual division of labor does not determine cultural value.
Mikell (1997) clarifies African gender roles and biology:
The progression of ideas in analyzing the roles of African males and females does not deny the role of biology but focuses upon understanding how these biological differences are used and/or ignored in African social structures and relationships. Accordingly, women themselves may accept symbolic gender distinctions that incorporate naturist assumptions about femaleness and maleness, while nevertheless challenging the subordination of women as an ultimate accompanying feature of these cultural constructs. In the final analysis, we are concerned with how women negotiate and manipulate gender relationships and meanings to meet their needs and interests at the local, national and global levels (1997:7).
For many people, indigenous or non-indigenous, male or female, caring about self, family, community and environment is paramount to a good life. This notion of care is central to ecofeminists, too, or what Merchant (1995) calls “earthcare” if we intend to liberate humanity, non-humans and the earth together (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Warren, 1994).
In the complete liberation of humans, male and female, is the liberation of non-humans and the recovery of biodiversity as well as the end of conflict, violence and hate (Warren, 1994). Some feminists and postcolonial theorists distrust this seemingly naive universalistic agenda declaring it smacks of New Ageism, female superlatives, or “goddess worship” (Salleh, 1997). Such critics ignore the efficacy of understanding deep ecological knowledge embedded in some people’s consciousness in relationship to ecological concepts, in our search for sustainability and security. This is most poignant in Africa where over 75 percent of the people rely on the land for their livelihoods (Chirui, 1996) and notions of politics and gender/power relations cannot be evaded (Mikell, 1997).
This article situates indigenous Kenyan women in complex interrelationships among indigenous beliefs, knowledges and innovations, colonial and postcolonial education and development practices and the global environmental crisis. The north propagates much of the destruction of the earth in an imbalanced, unjust dynamic of exploitation connected to colonial legacies and philosophies of the enlightenment. In this Malthusian scenario, most families in the south would not survive. Some might think this is closer to today’s reality than science fiction.
The intention here has been to focus on the strength, power and hope of indigenous women, to recognize their triumphs, tenacities and struggles as represented through multifarious relations with culture, nature, trees and food. What is indigenous knowledge if it excludes the particulars of gendered spaces and meanings and bypasses the empowerment and/or transformational process for women? As Louise Fortmann recounts: “In development circles - including the arena of women and environment - who is an “expert” and whose expertise “counts” is often shaped by the unsavory forces of elitism, racism, and neocolonialism” (1996: 211).
Most rural women who depend on fuelwood for their main source of household energy do not speak the “language of development or research” and some of them do not read any language. Linguists, such as Hemran Batibo (2001), warn that Africa with the highest diversity of languages in the world (2500 or 31 percent of the world’s total) will experience the most profound language diversity loss during the 21 st century, dwindling down to a few “languages of the elite” and other lingua franca. In East Africa, for example, with 230 languages currently in use, Kiswahili, along with the colonial languages of English, French and Portuguese, is predicted to force indigenous languages into extinction. Despite the unique intimacy of language with knowledge systems, Batido claims that “schools treat indigenous communities as if they have no knowledge” (2001:320) and suggests using “bush” terminology adapted to new conceptual concepts in the curriculum to form the foundation of studies in the environmental science
Sustainable approaches to restore biodiversity loss can be found within the linguistic, contextual and, sometimes, hidden gendered spaces of Embu elders’ cultural knowledge. The maldevelopment and miseducation of indigenous women in Kenya stems from a history of neglect and omission as well as continued misconceptions about what women think, know and need. We do not pretend to know what women think, know and need, but we hope this article has contributed to discourse about opening up spaces for indigenous women at the planning table.
Even well-intentioned sizeable campaigns, such as the Green Belt Movement mentioned earlier, misapprehend the significance and delicacy of biodiversity. With almost 1000 tree nurseries located in rural areas, the campaign literature describes three main “obstacles” to reforestation in Kenya: 1) multilingualism (over 40 languages in some areas); 2) illiterate women with low motivation; and 3) only imports available (Wallace, 1993). From the discussions above, traditional women who retain their allegiance to indigenous languages or beliefs or species are not obstacles to reforestation; they represent the voices of the endangered gendered spaces in which the miracles of life, and hope, exist. If only someone would listen.
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Citation Format
Chandler, D. J. & Wane, Njoki (2002). INDIGENOUS GENDERED SPACES: AN EXAMINATION OF KENYA. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: 2, 1.