Women In Northern Kenya Use Business To Challenge Gender Stereotypes

For many years entrepreneurship has provided women with opportunities to transcend societal limitations and allowed them the ability to provide for their families. Whether it's palm oil sellers in Nigeria or fish traders in Goma, women have constantly looked to business as a vital means for subsistence.

Women in Northern Kenya are once again looking to this age old ally and establishing businesses through the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT). The initiative, which is locally run, is committed to creating sustainable businesses for its members. One of these initiatives, BeadWORKS, has been particularly successful and recently secured a partnership with Whole Foods.

“The business builds on the traditional beading skills of women in conservancies, offering further training in craftsmanship, product development, and basic marketing and accounting skills.”

More than 1,200 women work with BeadWORKS to produce items such as homeware, jewellery and decorative pieces. NRT Trading serves as a middle man and gets these products to customers across the world. In 2016, women employed by BeadWORKS earned more than $75,000.

BeadWORKS is completely owned and run by women and has given these women unprecedented financial freedom. These women come from a society where they are not allowed to own property or access education. As expected, there was initial push-back from men in the community who were uncomfortable with the new roles women were taking on and saw it as a challenge to their position as breadwinners.

However, this changed as the benefits of the business were also felt by men. BeadWORKS provided much needed cash injections into these poor rural communities. It also served as alternative sources of income and reduced dependence on unreliable means of subsistence such as livestock farming and charcoal trade. In fact, the effects were so widely felt that many men are said to have sought to have their wives included in the business.