| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is based on a study carried out
1n order to fulfill my academic requirements for the one
year postgraduate diploma course in cultural studies, offered
by the Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi
during the 1986/87 .academic year.
It is a study undertaken with a hope that the findings
and conclusions will in some way be of benefit to those who
are interested in gender issues here in Kenya. The subject
"Women In Development';' is relatively new in the academic
field although interest in this area of study dates back
for a long time and the seriousness by which it has been
taken of late goes along way to show that much can be achieved.
My interest 1n issues concerning women dates back
to the mid -1960's during my stay in the United States of
America where the feminist movement reached its peak in the
seventies. Although both the United States of America and
my own society (Kenya) offer ~contrasting atmosphere in as far
as gender issues are concerned, due to the fact that human
rights are interpreted differently in~both societies, the
process of integrating womenJin development and the
underlying issues are basically the same. '-'The
process by which any government seeks to advance the
(ii)
growth and distribution of available resources must take into
account its women otherwise the development process is hampered.
My involvement in the feminist movement has been nonacademic
but more or less on the social level until this academic
,- year when I had a chance to be exposed to substantive and
theoretical issues in gender studies. The views expressed
in this-dissertation are not necessarily those of the
Institute of African Studies, but my own.
As such, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Hr.
F.E. Masakhalia, the former Permanent Secretary in the then
Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, of the Kenya
government, for having made it possible for me to be introduced
to the field of Development (Applied) Anthropology. This was
the stepping stone to·my-involvement and hence great interest
in the field of Cultural Studies.
I also wish to tha~~ the Swedish Agency for Research
Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC) for their grant
which enabled me to undertake the course. Above all, I wish
to wholeheartedly thank the Director of the Institute of
African Studies, Prof. Gideon S. Were for facilitating the
SAREC grant at the Ins-titute_without .wh.i-ch this study could
not have been possible.
~I
I wish also to thank my lecturers Dr. J. Akong'a,
Dr. Osaga Odak, Sultan Somje, Dr. J. Olenja and above all
my most thanks go to Dr. Collette Suda for supervising this
dissertation. | en |
