“Her Enlightened European Sister”: Colonialism, Feminism, and Modernity in the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene

Elizabeth Williams, University of Kentucky

In 1933, the members of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene found themselves in disagreement over how to conceptualize marriage rites in colonized Kenya. The AMSH, formed in 1915, was a British feminist organization which opposed regulated prostitution and other practices which they viewed as hostile to women. By the 1930s, the Association increasingly viewed Britain’s colonial possessions as part of their purview and considered themselves to be advocates for the rights and wellbeing of their colonized “sisters.” In the 1930s, the AMSH took up the question of marriage rites in Kenya, arguing that indigenous marriage practices amounted to slavery. They argued that the traditional payment of lobola (bridewealth) amounted to the “purchase” of a wife, and—along with the practice of polygamy—guaranteed that Kenyan women would be treated as chattel property, destined for lives of drudgery and abuse. While this vision aligned with the AMSH’s self-conception as modern feminists determined to rescue their colonized sisters, it clashed with the reports of Mrs. Isabel McGregor Ross, the head of the East African Women’s League, and a vocal critic of Kenyan colonization. McGregor Ross insisted that Kenyan women were valued and respected, and warned the AMSH against interfering, pointing out that “it was very rarely wise to interfere with native customs.” Instead, McGregor Ross encouraged the AMSH to investigate the abuses committed by the colonial government and local landowners. This paper conducts a micro-history of the debate over the social and legal meanings of marriage in colonial Kenya, focusing especially on the AMSH’s determination to conceptualize Kenyan women as “slaves.” By deploying the language of slavery, I argue, the members of the AMSH claimed a place for themselves as modern women while silencing critiques of empire by evoking Britain’s oft-stated claim to have abolished the slave trade in Africa.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 72. Intimate Rule: Gender, Marriage, and the Colonial State