ABSTRACT
A simple model in which the spread of markets undermined women’s powers would be a quite misleading way to understand the links between gender and agrarian change in Koguta. Changes in gender relations were slow and piecemeal and they did not move in a linear way. Instead, they responded to a series of changes in the political economy of the region – the emergence of labour migrancy, the rise of the remittance economy and more recent problems in the urban labour market. Until real wages in the urban economy began to rise in the 1950s, most Luo migrants did low-paid work, first mainly on the European farms and plantations and later in the urban areas. The Odhiambos were self-consciously ‘modern’. Modernity involved a different kind of marriage from the norm, a more private world where the conjugal bond was more important than ties with kin beyond the household.
