Women's medicine and fertility: A social history of reproduction in South Nyanza, Kenya, 1920--1980

The British colonial occupation of Kenya in 1895, led to profound transformation of human disease ecology, the therapeutic map, healing and reproductive knowledge. Changes in household labor organization, the shift from subsistence to cash crop production, improved transportation infrastructure, establishment and expansion of trading centers including changing gender roles and family structures, not only altered disease patterns, but also increased indigenous population susceptibility to new diseases, and exacerbated the spread of old ones. By mid 1920, the colonial government's effort to intervene and transform the reproductive and sexual practices of the Luo of South Nyanza in order to hasten the output of healthy and abundant male laborers for the settler economy was a clear manifestation of the impact of these changes.; My dissertation examines Luo women's health work, struggles, and negotiations around reproduction and sexuality from 1920–1980. Between 1920–45, the British colonial government initiated and funded maternal and child health care programs aimed at fostering population growth. From 1946 onwards, these efforts shifted to anti-natalist campaigns as the post-independent Kenyan government sought to curtail population growth through family planning programs. Drawing on extensive oral and documentary evidence from Kenya and England, I explore not only the varied and competing interest over reproduction and sexuality, but also how Luo women contested and re-defined state attempt to manipulate and control reproduction, Luo sexual practices, diet, nutrition, childbirth and healing. These struggles reconfigured gender and generation hierarchies at times forcing the colonial state and the independent Kenyan government to conform to the women's desire for autonomy over their bodies.; Analysis of contestation over reproduction and sexuality, raises questions about the symbolic and material significance of fertility particularly female fertility as resource subject to control, manipulation and ownership by certain individuals. When the interest of these individuals were threatened by other forces tension evolved which sometimes culminated in resistance and other times negotiation. Therefore we cannot understand these changing interests without knowing the social, economic and political process which shaped and influenced interests in female fertility and reproduction.