The Impact of Camp Detention on Women Empowerment in Kenya

Abstract

This thesis looks at the effect being detained in camps has on female empowerment. During 1954-1959 Kenya, the British colonial government detained a significant number of the Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu ethnic groups in order to suppress the anti-colonial Mau Mau movement for freedom and land led by native Africans. I use individual and geographic characteristics in order to determine the group of people that were affected by camp detainment. I then find that detainment does have a negative impact on female economic empowerment, and female literacy empowerment. However, the impact of detainment on sociocultural and health empowerment are not statistically significant enough for me to rule out the plausibility that it occured by chance. The effects of detainment on female empowerment largely do not appear to be transmittable intergenerationally. These effects also only seem to appear when certain proximity to internment camp cut offs are utilized, which could partly be due to the reduced number of treated observations that accompany smaller proximity to internment camps.