Women at the centre of Gusii life

Look at the archive photographs on this site and a pattern emerges: women grinding grain, thrashing corn, carrying firewood and water, walking to market with children on their backs. This was no accident of the photographer's eye — women were, and remain, the backbone of Gusii agriculture and household economy.

Traditionally, women cultivated the fields, cooked, kept the kitchen garden, made and traded pottery and basketry, and managed much of the family's daily economy — while also carrying the social work of kinship: marriages, hospitality and the raising of children in custom and language. A woman's labour built the homestead; her bridewealth cattle enriched her father's kraal.

Colonial and mission-era changes cut both ways: new schools opened gradually to girls, while land registration and cash cropping often shifted recognised ownership toward men. Today Gusii women farm, trade, teach, nurse and lead — and are also among the most active preservers of cultural practice: the weavers, choir leaders and chama organisers keeping traditions alive. Our oral-history programme deliberately records women's testimony, which earlier archives largely ignored.