“Bringing Home Development”: The Impetus of Ideology for Women’s Groups Near the Kenyan Coast

This chapter explores the motivation of women’s groups’ members among the northern Mijikenda in Kaloleni Division, Kilifi District, Coast Province. A considerable literature on voluntary, Kenyan women’s associations confirms that achieving community, infrastructural development or income-generating goals is problematic everywhere in the country. In their analysis of the meaning and message of “development”, Gudrun Dahl and Anders Hjort observe that its abstract ideology will be interpreted differently by each party involved in its processes. Public statements that espoused more specific directives concerning the content of group activities, confirm Dahl and Hjort’s suggestion for how affected parties may initially respond to the introduction of an ideology of development. The chapter suggests that the very lack of clear directives inherent in the ideological rhetoric of development may enable the new women’s forum to emerge in an indigenous setting of gender inequality, where women form the subordinate stratum.