British Women’s Roles in Colonial Policy-Making: Female Circumcision and Female Education in...

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British Women’s Roles in Colonial Policy-Making 3

British Women’s Roles in Colonial Policy-Making:Female Circumcision and Female Education in Kenya, 1929-1939

‘No greater end could be sought or achieved than this—that women, by theeffective discharge of new responsibilities here, should help to win a newdignity and a new freedom for their less fortunate sisters elsewhere.’1

-The Duchess of Atholl

INTRODUCTION

Gender and empire are two inextricably linked phenomena.2 Production and

reproduction, morality and cultural norms and colonial posts were all highly determined by

gender either out rightly or in effect. The campaigns of British women to improve the status

of native women in the colonies had a tremendous impact on the affairs of Britain’s African

colonies and the ways in which they were governed. Particularly, the role of British women

in shaping official policies toward female circumcision and female education in the African

colonies during the 1930s caused the Colonial Office to address the development of African

women. However, although primary resources are available, traditional historiography of the

British Empire neglects the contributions of British women to colonial policy-making.

Instead, it generally focuses on the grand adventures, or misadventures, of the ‘man on the

spot’; the Oxbridge educated colonial officer/hero/sportsman/manly man whose trademark

‘leadership’ and ‘character’ maintained the British Empire in Africa throughout the first half

of the twentieth century.3 British imperial history is dominated by its famous and sometimes

infamous male characters such as David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Lugard, Ian Smith

and Lord Delamere to name only a few. No doubt exists that those men, and many other men

like them, were indeed dominant figures in British imperial history. However, twentieth

century British women also proved to be key actors in the re-tooling of British colonial

1 K.M. Stewart-Murray the Duchess of Atholl, Women and Politics (London, 1931), p. 172.2 See P. Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004), edited volume.3 A. Kirk-Greene, ‘The Thin White Line: the Size of the British Colonial Service in Africa’, African Affairs,79:314 (1980), pp. 41-44.

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development policies in Africa, especially when concerned with African women. This article

aims to illuminate the significant influence of British women on these policies.

Upper and middle-class liberal women throughout Great Britain in the late eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries viewed themselves as protectors of women and the lower-classes

worldwide. Victorian liberal ideology emphasized the role of Europeans as civilizers and

protectors of non-Europeans. British women’s interventions on behalf of colonized women

began in the late 1700s with the anti-slavery campaign. In the mid-nineteenth century,

women fought to end the practice of sati, or widow burning, in India.4 British women

viewed slavery, sati and female circumcision as practices of universal oppression of women

by men. Therefore, the ‘liberated’ British woman felt responsible for uplifting colonized,

backward women who could not free themselves from the oppression of their husbands,

fathers, brothers, chiefs, British Governors and tribal customs.5

World War I caused disruption in the development of the colonies, especially in East

Africa, but subsequently ‘Empire-consciousness’ increased during the 1930s with a renewed

public interest in and criticism of Britain’s imperial claims. 6 Shadle claims that the 1930s

were the peak of colonial officials’ hostility toward African women and metropolitan critique

of colonial policies.7 The changing status of women in Britain and the colonies caused

concern in the Colonial Office. Runaway women, prostitution and abortion were key worries

of local administrators in the colonies. Not surprisingly, these and other social and economic

problems in Britain and overseas prompted inquires into colonial conditions.8 Britain needed

to justify its colonial possessions by providing development and social progress in areas of

4 See C. Midgley, Feminism and Empire: Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790-1865 (London, 2007).5 S. Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (New Haven, 2004), p. 242.6 L. Mair, Native Policies in Africa (London, 1936), p. 1.7 B. Shadle, “Girl Cases”: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya, 1890-1970 (Portsmouth, NH, 2006),p. 56.8 S. Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy 1914-1940 (London, 1984), pp. 229, 233.

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health and education in the colonies.9 Furthermore, the British believed that they held the

solution to all the problems confronting African women.10 Thus, the social conscience of

empire was reawakened in the 1930s.

Also during the 1930s, women’s changing roles in Britain opened up public spaces

for women’s political participation in the colonies. The ‘foremothers’ of campaigns for

colonized women’s rights had no vote and no female representatives in Parliament.

However, throughout the first half of the twentieth century women’s roles in the British

government were expanding. According to Bush, the defining features of twentieth-century

Empire include the ‘feminization of imperial policy and the wider participation of

emancipated white women’.11 In 1918 women over the age of thirty gained the right to vote

in Britain, and in 1928 the right to vote was extended on equal basis to all women. The

inclusion of women in British politics increasingly focused politics on women’s issues such

as birth control, equal pay, family allowance and other social reforms. Social reform in

Britain was driven, in large part, by women, ‘… for women are certain to exercise a

boundless influence on all great questions of social reform’ because of their ‘moral

enthusiasm’.12 Furthermore, people presumed that British men, who dominated the Colonial

Office and local administration posts throughout the Empire, were less attuned than British

women to the suffering and needs of native women.13 Social reform in the colonies was

expected in order to bring African societies forward in civilization. White women assigned

9 Constantine, British Colonial Development, p. 233; NA: CO 866/33/1327 Correspondence from Jeffries toHale, 16.12.38.10 T. Kanogo, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900-50 (Oxford, 2005), p. 89; KNA: PC/CP/8/1/1Secretary of Kikuyu Progressive Party to the Editor of the East African Standard, 7.9.29, in Kanogo.11 B. Bush, ‘Gender and Empire: the Twentieth Century’, Gender and Empire (Levine, 2004), p. 109; J. Lewis,Empire and State-Building, War and Welfare in Kenya 1925-52, (Oxford, 2000) pp. 10-13, 60-68.12 BLPES: JF/64 microfilm, extracts from the speech of Rev. William Tuchwell to the Warwick and LeamintonWomen’s Liberal Association; Women’s Gazette pamphlets and leaflets, No. 1, p. 3; Presidential Address, theCountess of Aberdeen, I.C.W. Executive Committee, Paris, June 1906.13 M. Perham, ‘The Future of East Africa II – working with the native, views in a diary’, The Times, Friday, 14Aug. 1930.

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themselves a superior role as saviors of Black African women. 14 Therefore, the role of

British women in domestic reform allowed them to exert influence over colonial policy-

making as missionaries, political activists, doctors, writers, settlers, nurses and teachers.

However, the notion of rights for African women created a dilemma for the Colonial

Office: as women’s roles in British government and their influence in colonial policy-making

increased, the degree to which colonial policies interfered in the lives of indigenous people

also increased. Issues that British women took up, such as female circumcision and female

education, often struck deep at the roots of African society and caused discord between the

colonial administration or missions and Africans. The Colonial Office was aware of the

dangers that reform posed, especially when the reformers attempted to change local customs

and threatened to limit the traditional practice of male control over female bodies. Therefore,

the Colonial Office proceeded with caution when at first the missions, then British women,

campaigned to change the conditions of native women. In the British African colonies,

native women were not consulted on their opinion toward female circumcision, but debates

on official Colonial policies for women’s education emphasized the need for the British

government to inquire into the status of African women. Even though British women’s

political interventions were not always wanted by the indigenous population or the Colonial

Office, and sometimes British women failed to show a complete understanding of indigenous

women’s desires or needs, the status of African women in particular would have remained

ignored for decades longer by the Colonial Office if it were not for British women activists.

The imprint of women on colonial policies is less emphasized in scholarly works than

the roles of imminent male figures who actually lived and ruled in African colonies.

However, in the past ten years more has been written on the ‘civilizing’ role of British

women, but nevertheless, particular attention to British women’s interventions in Africa

14 C. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity (London, 2003), p. 55.

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remains scant with few exceptions.15 Burton explains some of the difficulties that researchers

face when they dig into the archives in search of women’s roles in imperialism and

colonialism including archive catalogs that lack easy-to-find and relevant categorizations.16

Although a healthy body of historiography, anthropology, sociology and women’s studies on

female circumcision exists, most accounts focus on decision-making by local administrators,

the role of the missions, and the impact of the campaign on African women and their

responses to it.17 Notably, Thomas’s Politics of the Womb examines how women’s bodies

were commoditized as objects of economic production or producers of African laborers.

Female bodies were considered resources subject to colonial policies and controlled by

African men. However, a closer examination of Colonial Office and Parliamentary files

testifies to the influential role that British women played in colonial affairs. Why did the

Colonial Office not increase its efforts to curtail female circumcision in Africa before the

1930s? After all, Christian missions campaigned against the practice for decades before

British women. The campaign against female circumcision in the early 1930s illustrates one

of many intimate connections between women of the metropole and the colonies, and the

results of such interactions on the metropole and the colony.

The historiography of British women’s influence on African female education suffers

similar deficiencies as studies regarding female circumcision. Christian missions were

primarily responsible for African education in the colonies. However, it was not until the

1930s that the Colonial Office took serious interest in female education in the colonies when

the relationship between education, and the health and wellbeing of colonized women was

15 S. Pedersen, ‘National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy-Making’, TheJournal of Modern History, 63:4 (1991), pp. 647-680.16 A. Burton, ‘Archive Stories: Gender in the Making of Imperial and Colonial Histories’, Gender and Empire(Levine, 2004), pp. 281-94.17 L. Thomas, Politics of the Womb: women, reproduction, and the state in Kenya (Berkeley, 2003); Thomas,‘Imperial Concerns and ‘Women’s Affairs’: State Efforts to Regulate Clitoridectomy and Eradicate Abortion inMeru, Kenya, c. 1910-1959’, The Journal of African History, 39:1 (1998), pp. 121-145; and Thomas,‘“Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)”: Lessons from Colonial Campaigns to Ban Excision in Meru, Kenya’,Gender and History, 8(3):338-63 (1996); Kanogo, African Womanhood.

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brought to their attention by some British women doctors. Yet, the influence of British

women on native health and education policies is under-researched, but research on the

political influence of White women on behalf of non-White women is not altogether absent

from historiography. For example, Paisley writes about the maternalist notions of the White

Australian woman’s duty toward Aboriginal women.18 However, similar works on how

British maternalism influenced decisions in the Colonial Office are less specifically

addressed. Why, again, after decades of mission education in the colonies and special

attempts to improve native women’s education did the Colonial Office not begin to pay

attention to female education in Africa until the 1930s? Questions regarding the specific role

of British women in influencing and making colonial policies in Africa are left largely

unexplored.

The purpose of this research is to look at documents from the Colonial Office that

suggest the ways in which British women influenced colonial affairs and policy-making in

Kenya from 1929-1939 within the context of the historical role of British maternalism,

Empire conscience and women’s changing roles in Britain. Kenya serves as a case study for

the debate on female excision and the status of women because of the subsequent importance

that the female circumcision crisis played in the 1950s state of emergency and because of the

wide availability of primary resources on the colony. The research pays special attention to

the issues of female circumcision and female education as they relate to the improvement of

the health, wellbeing and status of African women. The following article first explores the

role of British women on female circumcision in the colonies. The article then looks at how

the initial campaign against female circumcision generated debate and inquiry into the

general status of colonized women through an exploration of native women’s education.

18 F. Paisley, ‘Citizens of their World: Australian Feminism and Indigenous Rights in the International Context,1920s and 1930s’, Feminist Review, 58:1 (1998), pp. 66-84.

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THE FEMALE CIRCUMCISION CRISIS IN PARLIAMENT

The campaign against female circumcision began in the first decade of the twentieth

century when the missions condemned the ceremony for being un-Christian. However, while

the Colonial Office grappled with the issue, no legislation was passed Empire-wide to ban the

practice. Governors of the colonies did not want to create conflict with the African’s,

especially over tribal customs, and especially when the primary objection to the practice was,

in view of the missions, its un-Christianness as opposed to economic concerns, which were of

paramount importance to the Colonial Office.19 By the 1920s, Christian missions began to

voice opposition to the practice based on medical concerns such as high infant and mother

mortality at birth as well as infections and sterilization in girls who underwent the procedure.

The argument of decreased birthrates appealed more to the economic sensibilities of Kenya’s

Chief Native Commissioner, G.V. Maxwell. He issued Circular Letter No. 28 in August

1926 to all senior commissioners asking that they attempt to limit the practice to simple

clitoridectomy ‘in the interest of humanity, native eugenics, and increase of population’.20

The issue was brought to the attention of Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of

Atholl, in 1929 during a meeting of the Church of Scotland Mission to the Kikuyu. At the

meeting, a missionary wife, Mrs. Hooper, described the mutilation and pain suffered by girls

in a typical female circumcision surgery. Shocked by the gruesome details given by Mrs.

Hooper, the Duchess became determined to end the practice of female circumcision

throughout the British Empire. 21

The Campaigners

Nina Boyle, a woman’s rights activist who lived in South Africa for 14 years by the

time of the female circumcision crisis, called 1929 ‘the year in which the conscience of

19 J. Boddy, Civilizing Women: British crusades in colonial Sudan (Princeton, NJ, 2007), p. 243; NA: CO533/392/1 Correspondence from Grigg to Passfield, 12.10.29.20 NA: CO 533/391/1 Circular No. 28 from Native Affairs Department, Nairobi, 23.8.26.21 Boddy, Civilizing Women, p. 234; S.J. Hetherington, Katharine Atholl, 1874-1960 (Aberdeen, 1989), p. 135.

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feminism overflowed into imperial channels’.22 British women were key campaigners

against the practice of female circumcision in Kenya from 1929 through the early 1930s. In

particular, the Duchess of Atholl and Eleanor Rathbone, both MPs and founding members of

the Committee for the Protection of Coloured Women in the Crown Colonies, were

influential in Parliament and determined in their efforts. The two women met in 1929. The

influence of Rathbone and other feminists led the Duchess to become ‘rebellious’ and to

speak out on new matters due to ‘a growing awareness of human misery’.23 In their eyes, the

African rite of passage was tantamount to the Indian practice of widow burning, which

British women had fought against during the previous century, and subsequently the Colonial

Government intervened to outlaw the custom.24 British women in Parliament placed a new

pressure on the Colonial Office and administration to take decisive steps to end what they

viewed as a ‘cruel, immoral and degrading’ practice.25

The Duchess and Rathbone were both influenced in 1927 by Katherine Mayo’s

controversial and shocking book, Mother India.26 The book told of the horrific physical

consequences of child marriage for young girls in India. As a result, Rathbone began to

campaign for changes to colonial legislation regulating child marriage. However, after

Rathbone’s unsuccessful campaign on behalf of Indian women – where she was severely

criticized by Indian women’s rights activists – her attention turned to Africa where similar

conditions of ‘sheer slavery’ existed among native women.27 Rathbone was an advocate of

women’s rights and was concerned with the conditions of colonized women throughout the

22 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 247; BLPES: ‘Retrospect’, Woman’s Leader, 21:48 (1930); BLPES: ‘FeministPolitics’, Woman’s Leader, 22:4 (1930), p. 27.23 Hetherington, Atholl, p. 134.24 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Extracts from J.W. Arthur M.D., ‘Girl’s Unsuccessful Fight for Freedom’, East AfricaStandard, 17 Sept. 1929, enclosed in correspondence from the Duchess to Passfield, 4.12.29.25 BLPES: ‘Women of the Coloured Races’, Women’s Leader, 22:24 (1930), Memorandum by the NUSEC forconsideration of delegates at the Colonial Conference.26 Pedersen, Rathbone, pp. 241-42; Hetherington, Atholl, pp. 130-31; Mayo, Mother India (London, 1927).27 Pedersen, Rathbone, pp. 242-43, 247.

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Empire.28 For Rathbone, female circumcision signified the universal subjectivity of women

by all men, and she believed that the British held the solution to all the societal ills of its

subject people under the ‘universal applicability of progressive ideals’.29 Unlike Rathbone,

the Duchess was a conservative and not a feminist. However, she supported women’s rights.

She believed that women should learn about politics and participate in public administration,

especially of poor law, education, public health, maternity and child welfare.30 She found

Mayo’s book ‘sad and shocking’.31 The Duchess believed not only that British women were

empowered to create positive change in the colonies because of their new public roles in

Britain, but that it was their duty.32 Therefore, according to the Duchess, British women held

responsibilities especially for women in Africa who were, as she described them, ‘in the grips

of native customs’ which caused physical pain and danger in childbirth.33

Action in Parliament

The Duchess and Rathbone exercised their maternalist obligations with the Colonial

Office in December. First, the Duchess established the Committee for the Protection of

Coloured Women in the Colonies in autumn 1929. Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour MP, was

committee chair, and members included Rathbone, Ormsby-Gore and others. One of the

Committee’s first tasks was to push the Colonial Office for stricter legislation on female

circumcision in the colonies. The Committee members spent several months gathering

evidence before they took their case to the Colonial Secretary, Sidney Webb.34 Webb met

with Wedgwood, the Duchess, and Rathbone on December 3, 1929. The Committee

members asked Webb for a select committee to be set up to inquire into the status of African

women in general and the practice of clitoridectomy in particular. Although Webb refused to

28 B. Stobaugh, Women and Parliament, 1918-1970 (New York, 1978), pp. 33, 45.29 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 260.30 Hetherington, Atholl, pp. 63-5.31 Ibid, pp. 131-132.32 Atholl, Women and Politics, p. 172.33 Ibid, pp. 169-70.34 In correspondence Webb signed his name ‘Passfield’.

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establish a new committee, he agreed to send a questionnaire to the African governors

regarding the prevalence of the practice and the status of women in their respective

territories.35 The outcome of the first meeting with Webb shows the influence that the

Duchess and her Committee had on the Colonial Office: Webb was willing to reopen the

extremely sensitive topic of female circumcision in the colonies and press it upon the colonial

governors.

From the beginning, the Duchess proved her persistence on the matter. The following

day after she met with Webb, the Duchess sent a letter informing him that she would send a

draft questionnaire inquiring into the status of women that the Committee wished to have

circulated to the governors. Enclosed with her letter were several documents intended to

persuade Webb: a graphic description by a missionary of the Church of Scotland Mission in

Tumutovo of a circumcision of African girls that she witnessed; a statement by Mrs. Hooper,

the wife of Reverend Handley Hooper and a staff member of the Church Missionary Society,

regarding the origins and significance of the custom in Kikuyu society; extracts of two

articles in the East Africa Standard regarding objections to the practice on moral and medical

grounds; and photographs.36 The Duchess sent Webb the suggested questions for circulation

to the colonial governors on December 23.37 In addition to interactions with Webb, the

Duchess and Rathbone employed other outlets through which to pressure the Colonial Office.

As Members of Parliament, the Duchess and Rathbone took advantage of their

positions to bring the oppression of colonized women to the attention of the British

government. They brought the debate to the House of Commons in December. On two

35 RP XIV.2.1 ‘Suggested Questions for Circulation to Governors and High Commissioners of Colonies andProtected Mandated Territories’ in Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 247; NA: CO 323/1067/1 dispatch from ColonialOffice to East African Governors, 8.3.1930.36 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Correspondence from Atholl to Passfield, 4.12.29.37 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Correspondence from Atholl to Passfield, 23.12.29, Suggested Questions for Circulationto Governors on the origins of female circumcision, the tribes that engaged in the practice, the extent of physicaland moral injuries caused by the operation, and actions the governors took to combat the practice or to protectgirls who were trying to escape the operation. The questionnaire also asked about the legal status of Africanwomen, the provisions for women’s health services, and education for girls.

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occasions during meetings of the House of Commons, the Duchess raised questions regarding

the practice of female circumcision in the colonies and asked what the colonial government

was doing or proposed to do in response. The Duchess enjoyed a great deal of influence in

the House of Commons. Elected in 1923, she was the first woman in the House of

Commons, and in 1925 Austen Chamberlain personally asked her to join the delegation to the

annual League of Nations meeting to work on welfare and morals, and youth education.38

The influence of the Duchess in Parliament provided the power and force that the Christian

missions lacked to trigger renewed interest on the part of the Colonial Office and Parliament

in the question of female circumcision. Therefore, Dr. Thomas Drummond Shiels, Under-

Secretary of State for the Colonies, advised Webb that something more must be done in the

colonies to stop female circumcision, or the concerned (and influential) members of the

House would not be satisfied.39 Because the women were MPs, their pleas to the Colonial

Office could not be handled quietly or pushed aside. Their inquiry was public record and as

such, gained the interest of women’s groups in Britain. Thus, the two-front attack on the

Colonial Office and in Parliament by the Duchess and Rathbone was effective.

The impact of the public inquiry into the status of women in the colonies drew the

attention of Parliament, the Colonial Office and the British public to the low status of native

women. In January 1930, Webb sent a letter to Sir Edward Grigg, Governor of Kenya,

stating that the issue had received ‘great prominence’ in debates and questions in the House

of Commons. Furthermore, he mentioned the growing negative sentiment in Great Britain

regarding the custom and that public opinion was dissatisfied with previous measures taken

to curb it. 40 However, Webb did not send the Committee’s questionnaire to colonial

governors as he had agreed in December 1929 because he ‘thought it better to consult

governments by means of a dispatch couched in somewhat more general terms and drawing 38 Hetherington, Atholl, pp. 111-12; Stobaugh, Women and Parliament, p. 3.39 NA: CO 533/392/11 Correspondence from Shiels, 21.12.29.40 NA: CO 533/392/10 Correspondence from Passfield to Grigg, X.15943/29 (No. 3), No. 26, 8.1.30.

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attention to the need for a strong forward policy in the promotion of better health

conditions’.41 Although care was taken to satisfy the questions of the Committee, members

of the Colonial Office tried to avoid creating trouble with the natives in the colonies by way

of the inquiry.42 Ultimately, the dispatch was ‘couched’ in fiscal concerns with regard to the

stagnant or dwindling native population. Webb conceded that it was suggested to him that

female native initiation rites were the cause for the decline in population. He applauded the

efforts of the Conference of East African Governors in 1926 concerning the practice of

female circumcision, but he encouraged the ‘most serious consideration whether it would not

be possible to take steps towards the complete abolition of this and similar practices’.43 His

caution was based in the fear of tribal unrest, which remained of great concern to the colonial

administration of Kenya in the 1930s.44 Nevertheless, the Duchess and Rathbone, among

others, continued to pressure Parliament and the Colonial Office to institute stricter

legislation to ban female circumcision.

Empire conscience tugged at women’s groups across Britain to stop female

circumcision in the colonies, but unlike previous maternalist campaigns such as anti-sati, this

time they were armed with a strong voice in Parliament. The Woman’s Leader, a weekly

publication that covered women’s domestic and international issues including the actions and

current undertakings of various women’s organizations and in Parliament, urged its readers

that women faced ‘new problems of a changing world…the solution of which all the force

and fire of the suffrage movement must be rekindled’.45 Because women had the vote and

41 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Correspondence from Boyd to Atholl, 19.4.30.42 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Notes by C.J. Jeffries, 21.2.30.43 NA: CO 323/1067/1, Colonial No. 65, 8.3.30; NA: CO 533/391/1, Reference to Circular Letter No. 28,23.8.26, “ the practice of female circumcision, which was of very ancient origin, should not be interfered with,but that the respective Governments concerned should endeavour to persuade such tribes as to return to the moreancient and less brutal form”.44 NA: CO 533/392/10 Correspondence from Shiels to Ormsby-Gore. Shiels, while concerned not to interfere intribal customs, insisted that everything possible would be done to end female circumcision. However, theColonial Office expected that the younger men and the KCA would be very much opposed to any change in theinitiation customs, 6.1.30.45 BLPES: ‘Feminist Politics’, Woman’s Leader, 22:4 (1930).

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were represented in Parliament, their ability to demand change was more powerful, and they

felt compelled to exercise that power to its utmost. They believed that the issue of female

circumcision could no longer be left to the missions or to local agencies. Women demanded

that Parliament and the Colonial Office respond to the crisis. The National Council of

Women of Great Britain, Edinburgh Branch, wrote to Shiels in support of the Duchess’s

Parliamentary question of December 11 and requested his attention to the matter. Shiels

assured the Council that the Colonial Office was concerned about the practice and was doing

everything possible to stop it, but he expected ‘very strong and bitter opposition from the

Kikuyu’.46 Even so, women’s councils, committees, action groups and concerned individuals

pushed Parliament to take action on behalf of the women of the colonies for whom Britain

was responsible.

The Colonial Office was in fact opposed to the most severe form of clitoridectomy,

which included excision of the clitoris, labia minora and labia majora, but they found no

offense in the ‘less severe’ operation, or simple clitoridectomy. Even Shiels claimed that the

‘badness was only a matter of degree’.47 Indeed, the purpose of female circumcision seemed

morally desirable—to prevent promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies and abortions.48 However,

even with all of the ‘force and fire of the suffrage movement’, women’s groups were unable

to convince their male counterparts that the clitoris was a sex organ and that any form of

excision was undesirable.49 As a result, the focus of the debate shifted from abolition or

limitation of female circumcision to the general improvement of native women’s status with

the hope of eventually ending female circumcision as a result of that improvement.

Furthermore, Empire conscience was better attuned to the wide suffering of native women

and their low social status in comparison with that of British women.

46 NA: CO 533/392/10 Correspondence from Shiels to Turcan, Secretary of the National Council of Women ofGreat Britain, Edinburgh Branch, 6.1.30.47 NA: CO 533/392/11 Correspondence from Shiels to Passfield, 21.12.29.48 NA: CO 323/1067/1 statement of Mrs. Hooper, 1929.49 Pedersen, ‘National Bodies’, pp. 666-74.

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The male-dominated Colonial Office and local administration may have ignored the

misery of native women because men were believed to be naturally less able to empathize

with the status of native women than British women. The focus of British women’s actions

on behalf of their colonized sisters took shape in a series of conferences throughout the 1930s

inquiring into the status of native women. The 1930 Conference on Domestic Slavery in the

British Empire focused on ways in which British women could improve the status of native

women and to appoint women officials to the Colonial Office and the Slavery Commission of

the League of Nations.50 Women such as Boyle ‘devoted labours on behalf of the women of

some of the native races for which we are responsible’ and pressed the issue on the

‘sympathy and political efforts’ of women’s societies.51 British women recognized an

opportunity to increase their political strength through their historic role as maternalists.

Women participated in Parliament, so they felt they should also participate in the Colonial

Office, especially on issues related to native women.

Women tried to become more involved in decision-making processes in the Colonial

Office in order to provide a voice for colonized women. The Conference on Women Slaves

in the British Empire hosted representatives from forty women’s organizations where the

Duchess and Rathbone spoke as members of their non-party Parliamentary Committee. A

resolution passed at the conference urged Parliament to (a) create a commission on slavery

under the League of Nations that paid particular attention to the enslaved status of colonized

women, which should include both men and women in the deliberative body; and (b) to

appoint a woman advisor to the Colonial Office to collect and disseminate information about

the status and wellbeing of both British and colonized women in the Colonies, Dependencies

and Territories.52 However, in June 1930, the Colonial Office held the Imperial Conference

without women delegates. In reaction, an article in the Woman’s Leader adamantly argued 50 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 247; BLPES: Woman’s Leader, 22:3 (1930).51 BLPES: Woman’s Leader, 22:3 (1930).52 Ibid.

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that a conference meant to formulate policy for the Empire was of as much concern for

British men as British women in regard ‘to their sisters in countries where domestic slavery’

still existed.53 Women’s groups worked feverishly to change policies that would ensure the

protection and improved status of native women in Africa, and to include themselves in that

policy-making process.

Broadening the Issue

The Colonial Office received the colonial governors’ responses to the dispatch it sent

in March regarding the status of native women. The Colonial Office discussed and debated

how to ‘edit’ or ‘doctor’ the findings without appearing deceptive or raising questions

especially by MPs such as the Duchess and Wedgwood. Individuals suggested that various

statements of ‘frankness’ and ‘criticisms of what has been done in Kenya’ be omitted, as well

as mention of the proposal to amend the Penal Code which considered the major

clitoridectomy operation a “maim” because that proposal was deemed ‘impracticable’. To

reduce circulation of the report, members of the Colonial Office suggested making only a

limited number of copies, charging it at a high price and not advertising its existence. 54 The

Colonial Office did not pursue the question of female circumcision directly with the

Governors because it was an explosive topic. Everyone involved in colonial affairs knew

from experience with the indigenous people and the missions that interfering with native

traditions, even those customs most appalling to European sensibilities, would unleash fierce

resentment and protest from the natives. As a result, the issue of female circumcision was

never directly broached by a serious and targeted inquiry. However, although the Colonial

Office avoided the problematic issue of female circumcision, the ongoing debate in Britain

prompted a general inquiry into the status of African women.

53 BLPES: ‘Women at the Imperial Conference’, Woman’s Leader, 22:19 (1930).54 NA: CO 323/1067/1 Notes between members of the Colonial Office regarding the nature of the dispatch andhow to handle the results, February 1930 – March 1931.

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British women not only faced obstructions from the Colonial Office in their labors on

behalf of their ‘oppressed sisters’ in Africa, but also many Kenyan women and girls fought to

preserve the initiation rite. British women failed to recognize the role that the initiation of

girls played in Kenyan society. To Kenyans, the initiation was a door into womanhood, and

girls who did not participate could not enter into the space of womanhood. This space was

not only ideological; it held real physical space within the tribes’ compounds. It also allowed

girls to marry and have children and to participate in important decision making within the

tribe. Louis Leakey described the important role of initiation and membership of the

individual to the initiation group in Kikuyu society in his 1936 book, Kenya: Contrasts and

Problems.55 In addition, the influence of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was strong

and natives were ‘advised to preserve their old customs, good or bad, and strenuously to

resist all attempts by the Missions or by Government to control or to suppress the customary

operations and ceremonies in connection with female circumcision and the initiation of girls

to womanhood’.56 Young girls and women who refused circumcision were subject to all

sorts of abuses by their tribe. Songs were sung to taunt, humiliate and ostracize

uncircumcised girls.57 Their own families would refuse to recognize them, and they might

even be beaten and then forced to be circumcised. For these reasons and many others, British

women faced unrealized opposition to their benevolent, though somewhat racially biased and

unwieldy, aims. Female circumcision could not be suppressed by legislation or force.

Instead, it ignited an inquiry into the general health, wellbeing and education of native girls.58

HEALTH, WELLBEING AND EDUCATION OF GIRLS AND WOMEN

During the mid-1930s the aim of British women to improve the depressed status of

native women in Africa shifted from the focus on female circumcision to include broader

concerns for the general health, wellbeing and education of native girls and women. 55 L. Leakey, Kenya: Contrasts and Problems (London, 1936), pp. 96-7.56 NA: CO 533/392/1, Governor Confidential, No. 130, Grigg to Passfield, 12.10.29.57 Ibid, Correspondence from S.I. Luka (C.I.D.) to Major E.A.T. Dutton, Private Secretary to the Governor, n.d.58 NA: CO 822/1137, Legislation for the control of female circumcision in Kenya, Wallis response, 14.11.56.

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Legislation banning or limiting the female initiation surgery proved ineffective and caused

mass dissention from Kenyan women and men, girls and boys. Therefore, British women,

colonial officials and missionaries believed that education was a better solution than

legislation to fight the battle against female circumcision, abortion, prostitution and

degeneration in Kenya.59 The belief that education would correct perceived social evils was

also influential during the late nineteenth century campaign to end sati in India.60

Understandably, the education of girls in England shaped attitudes about female

education in Africa. In England, girls were seen as a force for social and moral progress.

The purpose of their education was for ‘the good of the community’.61 Religious institutions

instilled a ‘deep sense of justice’ that led girls ‘to undertake work for their less fortunate

neighbor’.62 Therefore, because the education of English girls was linked to the civilizing

mission and the role of women as social improvers, the education of African girls and women

was believed to be a necessary first step for the social improvement of native peoples,

especially native women.63 Rathbone, among others, believed that the status of women

provided an indicator of the level of civilization of a country or people.64 Essentially, native

society only could progress as a whole, as British society had, through the education of

girls.65

However, social progress was limited and uneven in Kenya. Poor native health and

hygiene, limited government resources, isolation of native populations, the ignorance of

authorities on dealing with problems facing African women, and the fact that education and

59 WL: 3AMS/D/28, 26-28 May 1936, 12th Annual Conference of the British Commonwealth League in Africa,Miss G. Saunders, p. 44; Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 248; WL: 3AMS/D/01 ‘Health and Progress of NativePopulations in Certain Parts of the Empire’, Colonial Office publication no. 65 (1931).60 Midgley, Feminism and Empire, p. 74.61 A.G. Percival, The English Miss To-day and Yesterday (London, 1939), p. 284.62 Ibid, p. 309.63 Mair, Native Policies, p. 17.64 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 242; Kanogo, African Womanhood, p. 90.65 NA: CO 822/1137, Jones, ‘It would be impossible to try to suppress it by force. Rather Government isattempting to educate African opinion to accept a voluntary renunciation of a custom that would not beacceptable in anywhere in the civilized world’, 5.11.56.

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women’s health training usually were consigned to voluntary agencies and missions were

factors that made official policy on native girls’ education difficult to formulate.66 The

Colonial Office generally ignored the education of African girls because its aims for native

education were dependent on economic interests.67 Native girls did not stay in school or

contribute to the labor pool because they married and had children young, and they were

needed for agricultural and other domestic work in the reserves and villages. As a result, the

Colonial Office or African girls’ parents had little incentive to provide education to them.68

The education of girls was often referred to as ‘wastage’ because it was viewed as a pointless

endeavor.

Members of the Colonial Office and missions also commonly believed that native

women held on to their ‘absurdly primitive ideas’ more than native men.69 According to Dr.

Janet Welch, a medical officer of the Church of Scotland Mission Hospital in Nyasaland,

native beliefs and customs were the most difficult obstacle that the local administrators had to

overcome in order for the education of African girls and boys to be equal.70 Therefore, it was

thought that closing the gap between men’s education and that of women depended on ending

the superstitions, prejudices and fears passed from one generation of women to the next. It

was regarded as essential that native women be taught about proper health and hygiene

particular to the tropics to bring African societies forward and to improve the status of

African women.

66 M. Blacklock, The Development of Women’s Education and the Employment of Women in Health Work in theColonies, p. 3; NA: CO 847/3/15 Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, ‘Memorandum on theEducation of African Communities’, Colonial No. 103, 58-103, 1935.Col. No. 10367 Mair, Native Policies, p. 15; Blacklock, Development of Women’s Education, p. 7.68 NA: CO 847/3/15 Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, ‘Memorandum on the Education ofAfrican Communities’, Colonial No. 103, 58-103, 1935.69 BLPES JV/258, Address by Major the Honorable F. W. Cavendish-Bentinck (Member for Agriculture andNational Resources in the Kenya Government) at a Private Meeting of the Colonial Affairs Study Group of theEmpire Parliamentary Association, Mr. A Creech Jones, M.P. in the chair, 20.6.46, p. 18.70 NA: CO 859/1/9 1939 SCWE 3/39 Article for January No. of Overseas Education.

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African Women’s Education and Improved Status

Traditionally, missions were the main provider of African education in the colonies.

However, they relied on grants-in-aid from the government to carry out the work. As a result

of the female circumcision crisis the Duchess became generally concerned with the health

and wellbeing of African women. During the December 11, 1929 meeting of the House of

Commons, the Duchess asked Shiels about the expenditures by the governments of

Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda on services for women including midwives, hospitals, child

welfare and education of women and girls that were supplied directly by government and

missionary bodies using government grants. Shiels agreed to answer her questions in an

official report. While his report cited the amount spent on the upkeep, construction and

repair of hospitals, and the amount of grants awarded to missions in each colony, he failed to

report on amounts spent on maternity and child welfare, health services and female

education.71 Apparently unsatisfied with Shiels’s response and distressed by newly received

information on the lack of attention shown by Kenya’s Colonial Government to services for

girls and women, the Duchess probed Shiels further. On February 28, 1930, the Duchess

asked Shiels if he was aware that the grant funds given to missionary societies in Kenya for

the purpose of girls’ education had been reduced. Shiels reputed the claim and insisted that

the grant actually had been increased from the previous year, but he did not know how much

of the funds would go specifically toward education for girls.72 The following week

Rathbone asked Shiels about the reduction of grants for girls’ education in Kenya in light of

recent findings regarding the conditions of native women in the colony. She asked that he

consider increasing the grants to provide additional and improved education, medical and

nursing services for women. Shiels simply replied that it was already being done.73

71 NA: CO 822/21/13, The total government expenditure for medical and public health in Kenya was £199,198for a population of 2,838,022 Africans, only £1,847 was spent on maternity and child welfare services. Nonumbers for female education were available, but £2,000 was spent on domestic training, 1929-30.72 BLPES, Woman’s Leader, 22:5 (1930).73 BLPES: Woman’s Leader, 22:6 (1930).

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Inquiries into the status of native education began in earnest as a result of the 1925

Command Paper regarding the education policy in Africa. However, work stopped short of

any result or thorough inquiry due to difficulties in enacting native education, shortages of

funding and other matters that demanded the attention of the Colonial Office. However,

work resumed under the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies (ACEC) in 1935.

Under the Advisory Committee, special attention was paid to the education of native women

in a memorandum asserting that health was the ‘basis for retardation’ of native education and

that women were important mediators in changing attitudes, practices and beliefs about

health and hygiene among native communities.74 The memorandum required the Colonial

Office to intervene directly in women’s education to improve the status of women and, by

extension, that of the entire native society. The Advisory Committee made this

recommendation because African tribal society faced innumerable irreversible changes due to

interactions with Europeans – new bonds, loyalties, customs and traditions had to be

established before old ones could be abandoned.75

Cultural upheavals among African women caused alarm in the Colonial Office as

women escaped from their husbands and fathers to live in Nairobi.76 Those women often

became prostitutes or brewed beer to generate an income. The increasing interference and

influence of Europeans in African tribal customs created a gap in women’s instruction on

‘sex ethics’ as the traditional practice of female circumcision declined. The initiation

ceremony was the time when older women taught female initiates about tribal customs and

sexuality. Earlier concerns proved true for local administrators and missionaries. They

agreed that old customs had to be replaced with new ones or else African society would fall

into degenerate chaos. Thus, the report of the Sub-Committee on the Education and Welfare

74 NA: CO 847/3/15, ACEC, ‘Memorandum on the Education of African Communities’, Colonial No. 103,1935.75 ibid.76 I. Berger and E.F. White, Women in sub-Saharan Africa: restoring women to history (Bloomington, 1999),pp. 37, 46.

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of Women and Girls in Africa suggested that the Colonial Office ‘must provide new

sanctions for conduct to replace dying tribal customs’.77

Christian education replaced female circumcision and initiation practices.78

According to two Kikuyu women, one who was a young girl during the Mau Mau Emergency

of the 1950s and one born after the Emergency, education provided an alternative to excision.

They explained that if a Kikuyu girl was not circumcised she was unmarriageable and

therefore of less value because she would not fetch a bride price. However, the opportunity

for education meant that women could learn valuable skills such as nursing, teaching and

homemaking.79 Therefore, a girl’s identity was no longer necessarily tied to her initiation age

group. She had options for other social groups in which to belong. Other women interviewed

by Kanogo provided similar accounts of the role of girls’ education in providing a life

alternative to that associated with female circumcision.

Furthermore, according to Kanogo, the goal of a mission education for a young

woman was to produce marginally literate girls steeped in Christian ideals and suitable as

wives for Christian men.80 Correspondence and pamphlets from the Colonial Office support

the ideas revealed in Kanogo’s interviews. For example, wives of men at the Jeanes

Teacher’s Training School received instruction on how to maintain a model house in the

reserves when their husbands retuned as Jeanes teachers.81 This attitude reflects what the

Christian mission claimed was the desire of Christianized African men to have a

Christianized, civilized African wife. Education provided the prospect of marrying an

educated Christian man who desired a wife who he considered his moral and intellectual

equal. African attitudes about female education and native customs began to change

77 NA: CO 859/42/2 African No. 1169, p. 12, confidential, printed for the Colonial Office, adopted in early 1941but printing delayed until February 1943.78 Berger and White, Women in sub-Saharan Africa, p. 40.79 Interview: Sarah Ainley and Francesca Kaime, March 23, 2008, Greensted International School, Nakuru,Kenya.80 Kanogo, African Womanhood, p. 203.81 Leakey, Kenya, (London, 1936), p. 161.

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throughout the 1930s and after. For example, one man said that he wished his wife was

educated so that they could eat together, but he said she was boring and she smelled, so they

could not eat together.82

While the missions were the main source of native education in colonial Kenya, the

Colonial Office was pressured to take more responsibility in providing government services

to improve the status of native women. Unlike the campaign by the Duchess and her

Committee regarding female circumcision, native education was more familiar to the

Colonial Office and local administrators. The results of changes in the lives of native women,

along with the campaigns of British women for the improvement of the health, wellbeing and

education of native women provided the impetus needed by the Colonial Office to spend

money and energy to increase women’s education, especially in home sciences.83 However,

female education posed special problems such as opposition from native chiefs, which is one

reason that it was not pursued earlier. The fact that traditional teachers were replaced with

missionary women threatened African elders.84 Therefore, any legislation on the matter

required a thorough inquiry before action could be taken, for which the Colonial Office

proved more willing to conduct than surveys of an extremely sensitive topic such as female

circumcision.

Changing Attitudes and Colonial Policies

The inquiry into female health, welfare and education intensified in 1937 when the

Colonial Office responded to a paper written by Dr. Mary Blacklock on the ‘Welfare of

Women and Children in the Colonies’ in the Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology.

On January 22, 1937, the Colonial Office initiated the inquiry into the status of native women

with a dispatch to all of the colonial dependencies. The dispatch asked the governors to

conduct an inquiry into the status of women’s education and health services in their

82 NA: CO 859/1/9 SCWE, 1/39, M. Wrong, Year Book of Education, August 1939.83 Berger and White, Women in sub-Saharan Africa, p. 46.84 Kanogo, African Womanhood, p. 206, 208.

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respective colonies. It also included a copy of Dr. Blacklock’s article. The actions of the

Colonial Office illustrated a marked change in attitude about colonized women – it finally

recognized them after nearly a decade of British women demanding that it do so. This

inquiry was different from the one that Webb sent to the governors in 1930. The inquiry was

not the result of the immediate request of any women’s group, committee or individual.

Therefore, the reaction of the Colonial Office to Blacklock’s article illustrates how women

such as Rathbone and the Duchess called the attention of the Colonial Office to the important

connection between native women’s social progress and the development of the colony. The

inquiry was not couched in vague terms about a dwindling native population and its

ramification upon the colonial balance sheet. It was a targeted and purposeful inquiry.

Blacklock received the responses from the governors, and she compiled the findings

for each colony in a report. In general terms, Blacklock determined that African colonies

lagged behind other colonies in women’s education. In regard to Kenya, she included an

extract of the Kenya Colonial Government’s reports stating that ‘Up to the present no special

arrangements had been made for the development of any of the Government African

hospitals as training institutions for African girls as nurses.’85 Blacklock linked the general

lack of women’s education in Africa to the lack of women nurses which, she claimed,

contributed to poor health and hygiene standards.86

Several months after the Colonial Office sent the first dispatch, a second one followed

in response to a memorandum by Dr. Philippa Esdaile on training African women in

domestic sciences. The Colonial Office found the information in the two dispatches

overwhelming and the task of compiling and responding to the reports too daunting for them

to address. The result was the establishment of a sub-committee of the ACEC in September

1939. The Sub-Committee on the Education and Welfare of Women and Girls in Africa was

85 Blacklock, ‘The Development of Women’s Education’ (1937), p. 2.86 Ibid, pp. 3-4.

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charged to ‘survey the whole field of women’s education and make recommendations for its

advancement’ as a ‘means of accelerating social progress in the Colonial Empire by increased

education of women and girls and by welfare among them’.87 According to members of the

Sub-Committee, not until the mid- to late 1930s did the Colonial Government begin to view

African women as an, ‘influence of far-reaching effect upon whose education and

enlightenment depend the well-being and development of their respective territories’. 88 The

Sub-Committee issued its findings and recommendations in February 1943 and emphasized

the ‘special importance of Women in African society, and the need for making up the lag in

their education’ because of the changed status of African women predicated by colonialism.89

The efforts of first the female circumcision campaigners and then the female

education and health campaigners raised the consciousness of the Colonial Office to a new

issue – the advancement of native women as vital to the economic and social progress of the

colony. The Colonial Office could not ignore the influence of British women campaigners in

Parliament and on public opinion. The Honorable Member for Education, E. A. Vasey, paid

tribute to the influence of British women in solving social problems throughout the Empire in

his opening speech to the 1950 Conference of Women Educationists:

It has perhaps taken people a long time to realize the importance of educating womenand girls. This century has, however, seen a great change in the social structure of ourtime. The influence of women has been recognized not only from the home point ofview, but in connexion [sic] with the many social problems which can only be solvedthrough the leadership of women by women.90

Vasey’s words acknowledged the struggle that British women engaged in since the British

Empire came onto the map. Indeed, it took a long time for the creators and maintainers of

empire to see that the status of a whole native population depended on the progress of the half

87 NA: CO 859/1/9 SCWE, 6/39, Female Education in the Colonial Empire, Summary of Facts Showing thePresent Position, p. 1, n.d.88 Ibid, p. 11.89 NA: CO 859/42/2 ACEC, Report of Sub-Committee on Education and Welfare of Women and Girls inAfrica, 24.2.45.90 NA: CO 533/565/9, pamphlet, Conference of Women Educationists, 15-17 Aug. 1950.

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of that society which were viewed as its lesser members – women. In the same way that

Britain saw internal changes to the status of its women, those changes were reflected on the

status of native women in African colonies. The aims of education for British girls were

reflected on policies regarding education of native girls. However, the status of colonized

women remained a special concern for British women to address rather than part of

mainstream colonial policy-making; it did not quite deserve the attention of all of the

Members of Parliament or the Colonial Office. At the same time, it created a niche that

British women owned. On March 6, 1951 the Governor of Kenya wrote to James Griffiths,

MP, Secretary of State for the Colonies, about the results and status of the Beecher Report.

He noted that Members of the House of Commons ‘laid emphasis on the importance of the

education of women and girls’ during a debate about the Beecher Report.91 The Colonial

Office expected British women to inquire into and inform colonial policy on the education of

African women.

CONCLUSION

Despite the conflicted role of the Colonial Office and some opposition from native

women, the Duchess’s actions in Parliament encouraged British women to fulfill their

responsibilities toward colonized women by pressing the needs of midwifery, child welfare

and education for girls in Africa upon the Colonial Government.92 Rathbone also made

important contributions to women’s interventions in the colonies. In 1936, she made a trip to

Africa for which ‘the conditions of native women’ was her special political concern.93

Ultimately, the Colonial Office could not completely end female circumcision in Kenya and

other colonies. Indeed, the Colonial Office was hesitant to try. However, the efforts of the

Duchess and her Committee forced Parliament, the Colonial Office and colonial governors to

91 Ibid.92 Stewart-Murray, Women and Politics, p. 172.93 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 276; WL, 7/ELR/28, EFR to Mona Hensman, 3.2.36; RP XIV.3.4, ‘Miss EleanorRathbone’s Election Address’ (1935), p. 2.

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pay attention to the wellbeing of native women. The result of British women’s political

struggle to ban female circumcision in Kenya had profound, broad-reaching and lasting

effects on the colony. The female circumcision crisis ignited a struggle for many Kikuyu,

Meru and Embu, which, in the case of the Kikuyu, politicized the issue and helped the KCA

gain mass support for its activities. It also strained the relationship between Africans and

missionaries and created problems for the local authorities that were exacerbated during the

Mau Mau Emergency.94

However, the political struggle to end female circumcision also resulted in

progressive outcomes. The aims of British women in matters such as female circumcision

and female education in Kenya were often in opposition to the policies of the Colonial Office

and local administrators to allow continuance of traditional control of native women’s bodies

by native men.95 Despite the resistance of the Colonial Office and local authorities, British

women brought debates on female circumcision and the need to improve the general health

and wellbeing of native women through education to the forefront of colonial development

policies in Kenya during the 1930s.96 Without the persistence of dedicated women MPs such

as the Duchess of Atholl and Eleanor Rathbone during 1929 and 1930, the status of women in

the colonies may have remained neglected by the Colonial Office. However, these women

paved the way for other women – doctors, sociologists, educationalists, missionaries and

anthropologists, among others – to petition the Colonial Office on behalf of colonized

women.

Renewed public interest in and criticism of Britain’s imperial claims during the 1930s

plus women’s increasingly political roles in Britain opened up public venues for women to

participate in formulation of colonial policies. The moralizing and civilizing roles of British

94 NA: CO 533/391/1, Governor confidential, No. 130, Grigg to Passfield, 12.10.2995 P. Levine, ‘Sexuality, Gender, and Empire’, Gender and Empire (Levine, 2004), pp. 134-155; Pedersen,‘National Bodies’; Thomas, ‘Imperial Concerns’.96 A. Bashford, ‘Medicine, Gender, and Empire’, Gender and Empire (Levine, 2004), pp. 112-133; Mair, NativePolicies, pp. 15-18.

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women as the conscience of empire allowed Britain to justify its possession of colonies. 97 It

also enhanced women’s places in British government and society. Rathbone elucidated the

special role that women played in British politics when, in her final presidential address to

the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship in 1929, she asked whether a

‘wave-length set up by human suffering, to which the minds of women give aspecially good reception’ existed, and whether ‘the results of the new citizenship ofwomen…will be a changed attitude on the part of society…especially towards thehappiness and suffering of its less powerful and articulate members’?98

British women urged the Colonial Office to inquire seriously into the rights and privileges of

native women in the colonies, especially in Africa.

In terms of historiographical accounts of the role of British women in imperial policy-

making, evidence is plentiful but scholarship is lacking with regard to Britain’s African

colonies in the twentieth century. This article sought to shed some light on the important and

formative roles that British women played in policy-making in the Kenya colony. The

Duchess of Atholl and Eleanor Rathbone brought the issue of female circumcision in Kenya

to the attention of Parliament and the Colonial Office in 1929. Their campaign was persistent

and more influential than missionary societies had been in the past. Subsequently, the status

of native women became an urgent concern of the Colonial Office during the 1930s and

beyond. British women from all walks of life became interested in the condition of native

women. Doctors such as Mary Blacklock wrote articles about the lack of female education

and the corresponding poor health and hygiene that African societies suffered, which

provoked action by the Colonial Office. Women’s societies interested in protecting

colonized women sprang up across Britain. They became a force to be reckoned with and

one that neither the Colonial Office nor Parliament could ignore.

97 P. Graves, Labour Women: women in British working class politics, 1918-1939 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 161.98 Pedersen, Rathbone, p. 240; E. Rathbone, ‘Victory – And After?’, Milestones: Presidential Addresses at theAnnual Council Meetings of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Liverpool: Lee &Nightingale, 1929), pp. 44-9.

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Women’s roles are often sidelined in studies of empire because they generally are not

the conquerors or public officials responsible for empire. However, it is clear from the

evidence presented in this article that not only were women much involved in empire in some

of the same ways as men but also in ways in which men were believed to be unable,

uncomfortable, or ill-suited. Treasure troves of documents about women’s roles in the

British Empire await the eyes and minds of historians. This article has only begun to scratch

the surface of the rich documentation on the acts of individual women, committees, sub-

committees, councils and societies concerned with the status of colonized women. The

actions of these advocates were rooted in the changing roles of British women and reflected

by the changing status of native women. The importance of further inquiry into women’s

actions in colonial policy-making is to enhance the complexity and fullness of debates on the

history of the British Empire, and to demonstrate the extent that empire penetrated British

society and that colonial policies were influenced by the domestic climate.

The need to further the inquiry into the nature of women’s roles in empire and the

impact of women on colonial policies also is apparent when examining modern relations

between nations and legacies of empire. The work of non-profit, government and non-

governmental organizations, corporations and individuals in the former colonies remain

influenced by colonial ideologies and often initiate the same civilizing missions as those of

the early twentieth century British Empire. Women of the developed world still claim to

represent and act as advocates for the advancement of women in developing countries. Like

their predecessors, modern women’s organizations such as V-Day, a global movement to stop

violence against women and girls, speak publicly on behalf of women in developing

countries. The study of British women’s roles in twentieth century Empire is relevant and

important to help understand modern relations between people and nations. After all, history

is not a dead thing, and women are not passive extras in British imperial history.

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Word Count 9,945

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Thomas, Lynn, ‘Imperial Concerns and ‘Women’s Affairs’: State Efforts to RegulateClitoridectomy and Eradicate Abortion in Meru, Kenya, c. 1910-1959’, The Journalof African History, 39:1 (1998), pp. 121-145.

—, “Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)”: Lessons from Colonial Campaigns to BanExcision in Meru, Kenya’, Gender and History, 8(3):338-63 (1996).

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