Mission Impact on Women in Colonial Kenya

This chapter analyses the experiences of Kenyan girls and women as they struggled to make sense out of the conflicts, contradictions, opportunities, limitations and the transformation created by their entry into mission stations. Christian missionaries and colonial administrators shared the broad common goal of trying to transform the lifestyles of Africans. In many ways missionaries sought to restructure and redefine the social organisation of basic African institutions. Colonial government and missionary visions for Africans converged on many issues, including the need to introduce formal education, Western medicine and ‘better’ methods of agricultural production. In Kenya, missionaries were not always enthusiastically received once it became clear that they despised many aspects of African cultures and practices. The most noticeable and immediate changes in the lives of mission girls were external. By the 1920s missionaries had managed to attract an increasing number of converts who wished to attend their schools

Archaeology · Colonialism · Geography · Political science · African history and culture studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History

• Circoncision féminine et masculine en pays kikuyu

  Open Access•Y Droz•Cahiers d études africaines•2000

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