African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–1950

“This is the most interesting general Kenyan social history that I have had the pleasure to read for many years. It fills a large gap in the colonial history of Kenyan women as they negotiated changes in the most domestic areas of their experience. Within a broad analysis of colonial opportunities for physical, social and educational mobility, Kanogo shows how African and British male authorities tried, with uncertain opinions and from different perspectives, to control female initiatives, and how, to varying degrees, women managed to achieve increasing measures of control over their own lives.” ~John Lonsdale, Trinity College, Cambridge

“A superb study of how, across the colonial period, the range of indigenous, government, and mission authorities...struggled to control and redefine the cultural and institutional practices that regulated women's lives.”