#5: Flipping the patriarchy!
In blog #2, I drew a focus to the Maasai tribe in understanding how development and women's empowerment (SDG 5) in substantially patriarchal and pastoral societies can be aided through more effective water access (SDG 6).
Reflecting back to blog #2: after reading my good friend's fantastic recent blog post, Heather described how the Samburu tribe of North Kenya flipped the patriarchy in establishing their own safe women’s-only village called Umoja:
Adding to Heather's blog post (which I really encourage you to read!), the Samburu tribe, alike to the Maasai tribe, are a patriarchal pastoral nomadic community where women bear the burden of spending hours collecting water, restricting their opportunity to develop and gain more equal rights to men. In addition, the Samburu women were victim to female genital mutilation (FGM), arranged marriage, sexual and domestic abuse, and further mechanisms of oppression under their immensely patriarchal society.
However, in Umoja, women are in control of both reproductive and productive sectors of society, and no longer experience such abuse and oppression! Among other goods, the women of Umoja sell symbolic handmade beaded jewelry (seen below!) to make a living and fund their society.
Although this was blog was a slight diversion, it's important to reflect back and help raise the voices of these women leading the lives they should be!
Thanks for the reference Adwoa! I'm so glad you enjoyed my blog post, and I think you have so effectively elaborated on the experiences of the Samburu women, and highlighted how important it is to hear the voices of women if we are to tackle patriarchal cultural systems. I also really enjoyed reading about the case study of Ethiopian women's empowerment. I hadn't heard of microcredit programmes previously! Very interesting, I wonder where else these have been effectively employed...
ReplyDeleteThank *you* for sharing and teaching us on the Umoja village Heather, I wouldn't have been able to create this post without your fantastic input! I unfortunately had to temporarily omit the examples of Ethiopian women from the blog due to formal word counts but I agree! I will be adding to this current series in the coming months so I may do some more research into the effectiveness of microcredit programmes for women's development and empowerment. -For those wanting to view the information on Ethiopia, please see my comment below, alternatively I will be adding the additional case studies in the coming weeks.
DeleteFor those wanting to view the temporarily omitted information (due to formal word count limitations, these will be added back in the coming weeks but) please see below and let me know what you think:
ReplyDeleteThough they aren’t necessarily flipping the patriarchy by establishing an entirely new settlement, women in many other Kenyan communities, such as the arid Marsabit District in North Kenya, sell honey, milled grains, and bread to improve their life outcomes and, thus, development as well as empowerment (Cappock 2013).
Further studies of women's empowerment in the pastoralist communities of Ethiopia's Ogaden region and north-eastern Somalia have shown growth in women's development from increased water access, through selling camels milk, generating a tremendous ≤80% of household income (Kristjanson et al. 2014). Some of these communities had been facilitated through microcredit programmes, enabling them to buy drought-tolerant seed alternatives, and produce water boreholes for example (participatory development - which I will be writing on in my future blogs!). This increased their water and food security, again, demonstrating how more effective access to water reduces time poverty and improves women’s empowerment (Nduma et al. 2001).