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A History Without Women: The Emergence and Development of Subaltern Ideology and the ‘Land Question’ in Kenya

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Abstract

Kenya’s land question concerns the distributional inequalities that were occasioned by colonial land policies, and which impact the country’s political stability. There are two main schools of thought that explore how the land question and attendant political issues may be resolved. These are the dominant and the subaltern. The dominant school of thought has largely informed Kenya’s land law system, but it has failed to effectively address issues around political stability. This has meant that subaltern ideology, which was historically ignored in the formulation of the country’s land policy, is now increasingly informing land policy. Gender is primarily included in the dominant school of thought, but is excluded from subaltern ideology. The exclusion of gender from subaltern ideology results in the mis-framing and lack of holistic understanding of how women experience inequality with regard to land. This article explains why the subaltern ideology excludes gender and demonstrates the importance of including gender lenses in this ideology.

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Notes

  1. The development of Kenya’s legal and political system may be categorised into the following three key periods: 1895–1963, which marks the colonial period, when Kenya was under British rule (Dilley 1966); 1963–1982, which marks the post-independence period, when the British transferred political power to native Africans, and eventual African self-rule with a focus on nation-building; and 1982–2010, which marks the democratisation period, when Kenya was under one party rule following an attempted coup in 1982, which was followed by the struggle for and eventual reintroduction of multi-partism in 1990 and culminating in 2010 with the promulgation of the current Constitution.

  2. The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, art 60(1).

  3. Constitution of Kenya, 1963, s 82(4).

  4. The National Cohesion and Integration Act, 2018, s 3(1) and (2).

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  1. School of Law, University of Nairobi, P.O. Box 30197-00100, Nairobi, Kenya

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua

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  1. Agnes Meroka-Mutua
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Correspondence to Agnes Meroka-Mutua.

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Meroka-Mutua, A. A History Without Women: The Emergence and Development of Subaltern Ideology and the ‘Land Question’ in Kenya. Fem Leg Stud 30, 181–200 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-022-09488-4

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