ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with work among rural people in Kenya's Western Province, whose population is predominantly Abaluyia, Kenya's second largest ethnic group, numbering about four million in 1999. It then weaves age together with gender in considering work among Abaluyia women of western Kenya. Work has often been equated with labour force participation or remunerated work, thus ignoring a great proportion of human energy expenditure, especially that of women. Culture and history are implicated in any consideration of work. Indigenous ideas about work include the distribution of tasks and the material and social rewards of work. Among Abaluyia of western Kenya, ideas about work are woven into the social fabric along with ideas about gender, age, personhood and social reproduction. In colonial Kenya's developing capitalist economy, men were favoured for education and employment. The colonists appropriated land in the Highlands for European farms.