Trouble Showed the Way

Claire C. Robertson, Professor of History and Women's Studies at Ohio State University, is the author of Sharing the Same Bowl, winner of the 1985 Herskovits Prize, and co-author of Women and Slavery in Africa and Women and Class in Africa.

"Based on extensive archival and oral research, Robertson's book offers a fascinating and previously untold story—that of women traders in central Kenya. Fundamental to the economic and social history of East Africa, women's trade both predated colonialism and outlasted it. Exploring the interlinkage of women's agricultural production and their trade, Robertson describes how, during the colonial period, central Kenyan women dominated the dried staples trade throughout much of the country and fed the rapidly growing urban center of Nairobi. She demonstrates the ways in which colonial policies, aided and abetted by African men, gradually circumscribed women's trading options and their economic activities, mobility, and sexuality. Women responded to these efforts with resistance and innovation. In the postindependence period, women's solidarity groups and campaigns of collective action have increasingly led to their empowerment, despite male antipathy and a hostile state. Robertson's book represents a powerful contribution to African social, economic, and women's history. Highly recommended. Upper—division undergraduates and above."—E. S. Schmidt, Loyola College in Maryland, Choice, June 1998