ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to control women's trading activities in Nairobi and Kiambu, the dominantly Kikuyu area immediately adjoining Nairobi to the north and northwest. Kikuyu women's trade stretches well back into the nineteenth century but was transformed by colonialism as new opportunities and imperatives encouraging trade presented themselves. The chapter concentrates on the period between 1920 and 1963, during which the scope of the women's trade increased, as did the intensity of their involvement. With this increase, Kikuyu men perceived more need to control such women's activities, particularly their movements. It concludes at the point when male dominance expressed in control efforts had changed from an ethnically based particularistic effort to a more diffuse class-based campaign. In Africa, "loss of economic control over traders is equated with loss of sexual control over women", and control over labor, specifically women's agricultural labor, determined the wealth a man could accumulate.
