This thesis explores the roles of women of faith in peacebuilding in the conflict
between the Gusii and Maasai of South-western Kenya. While religion has at
times legitimated women’s exclusion and predominantly created male religious
elite figures in peacebuilding, I demonstrate how women of faith deploy religious
resources for peace. Acting within complex unequal gendered socio-cultural
conditions and positions, the women of faith deploy religious faith as an identity,
motivation, and legitimating moral authority and voice in peacebuilding. Gendered
barriers hinder them from finding status and a place in formal peacebuilding
mechanisms alongside males, but still the women of faith struggle and develop an
attitude and disposition of moral influence, and faith power that facilitates them to
act as agents in peacebuilding. The women of faith deploy religious resources in
mourning and burial rituals of healing and reconciliation, in everyday spiritual
practices of sharing lives, and through services that provide security and
protection especially for children, the elderly, the injured and the infirm. Religion
enables women to establish protective infrastructure through women of faith
networks and organizations that provide services to the community, mobilize
human capital, and conduct outreach and community engagement. I show that
even as the women of faith deploy these religious resources for peacebuilding,
they recognize the gendered barriers they are faced with and the public
peacebuilding mechanisms that they are excluded from. Deployment of religious
resources for peacebuilding intersects with gender identities and relations, and in
some instances religious faith transcends established gender norms and
gendered barriers or even removes them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/7289 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Ogega, Jacqueline Christine |
| Contributors | Macaulay, Fiona |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, School of Social and International Studies |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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