Umoja: All-women village in Kenya challenging traditional gender roles

Team Udayavani, Mar 8, 2021, 6:07 AM IST

We don’t know what the world would look like if women ruled it. While we can’t say for certain that women would make a better fist of it, or behave any better, what we do know is that when women are in leadership positions or involved in decision-making, societies work better.

If women ruled the world, they would stop being fragile, they would stop being dependent, they would never be the victim, they would never be abused. When women are free and happy they will know how to rule, in one such instance, a village in Kenya has been embarking on a rare experiment, a community without men, where women are the homeowners and breadwinners.

The village of Umoja, unity in Swahili, is a rather unique village in the grasslands of Samburu in northern Kenya. The village was founded in 1990 by a group of 15 women who were survivors of rape by local British soldiers.

Umoja’s population has now expanded to include any women escaping child marriage, FGM (female genital mutilation), domestic violence and rape – all of which are cultural norms among the Samburu.

Rebecca Lolosoli is the founder of Umoja and the village matriarch. She was in hospital recovering from a beating by a group of men when she came up with the idea of a women-only community. The beating was an attempt to teach her a lesson for daring to speak to women in her village about their rights. The Samburu are closely related to the Maasai tribe, speaking a similar language.They usually live in groups of five to 10 families and are semi-nomadic pastoralists. Their culture is deeply patriarchal. At village meetings men sit in an inner circle to discuss important village issues, while the women sit on the outside, only occasionally allowed to express an opinion.

Rebecca Lolosoli, founder of Umoja

Umoja’s first members all came from the isolated Samburu villages dotted across the Rift valley. Since then, women and girls who hear of the refuge come and learn how to trade, raise their children and live without fear of male violence and discrimination.

There are currently 47 women and 200 children in Umoja. Although the inhabitants live extremely frugally, these enterprising women and girls earn a regular income that provides food, clothing and shelter for all.

Many of the women have turned to entrepreneurship as a way to support themselves. They charge visitors a small fee to enter the village, where they sell traditional handmade jewelry and crafts. They also operate a campsite for tourists on safari in the Samburu National Reserve.

The older women also teach the younger ones about social norms like female genital mutilation, forced abortions, etc, which they have escaped from. They have also built a school on the Umoja women’s land, and it’s open to the nearby villages as well.