Moral Authority, Power and Women's Identity in Colonial Kenya

The concept of moral authority facilitates a deeper understanding of the fluid interconnections that exist between what are seemingly separate spheres of women's lives. Importantly, moral authority highlights the way in which agency, power, culture and meaning impact on the daily experience of life. This paper examines the gendered notions of moral authority that protect women's political spaces and identity. For women under colonial rule, the use of moral authority provided not only a sense of personal power but also a method of confronting powerful menfolk and undermining the colonial regime. In exploiting the power that came from being a wife, or a mother, or via links with the spirit world, women confronted those who impinged on their rights and livelihoods. In present-day Kenya, does the use of moral authority contribute to women's agency and challenge notions of identity?