participating in Mau Mau, a comprehensive treatment of oathing including the
gender analysis has been slow. Part of the problem is that the voices of many
ex-Mau Mau veterans were suppressed for almost fifty years after the movement,
and in the process many of the stories and accounts of women have been
buried, forgotten, and ignored. However, there are a few works that have
provided different aspects of women’s experiences with Mau Mau that can shed
light on the various issues and challenges faced by women oathing and
participating in Mau Mau.
Cora Ann Presley, in her 1992 work, Kikuyu Women, The Mau Mau
Rebellion, and Social Change in Kenya, argues that from 1880 to 1962 the role
of women transformed because of their “politics of protest.”26 Presley shows that
female participation in Mau Mau strengthened and enlarged the Mau Mau
movement showing that the challenges to the Europeans was much more
expansive and deeper than many accounts.27
The rarely heard rural voices of Kikuyu women Compellingly emerged in
Voices from Mutira, Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910-1995 by
Jean Davison. Davison traces the lives of seven women from the Mutira
Location in the Kirinyaga District of Kenya. These accounts attest to the power of
the words of the women themselves to formulize and communicate how they
lived and interpreted Kenyan historical developments. The detailed and unique
oral accounts of these women all show the varied perspectives and the
26 Cora Ann Presley, Kikuyu Women, The Маи Май Rebellion, and Social Change in Kenya, (Boulder:
WestviewPress, 1992), 1.
27 Presley holds that “there was a gender gap” with the female importance often being not treated or
neglected in the political conversations.
161