Presentations by Professor Ann Stewart, Warwick Law School; Dr Jenny Lander, Early Career Fellow, Warwick Institute of Advanced Study; David Ngira Otieno, Mount Kenya Law School Nairobi.

The research assesses the contribution of community-based ‘woman to woman’ marriage practices in Kenya to the provision of care, particularly for older people, when there is little social welfare available. The everyday practices of caring for older people particularly women, traditionally woven into communal relations, are changing in the socioeconomic and political circumstances of contemporary Kenya. Are woman to woman marriages, understood within ethnographic and anthropological discourse as a means of tackling infertility, evolving into a way of recognising and ‘rewarding’ caring labour for those with assets? How are claims for recognition of the caring labour provided in these practices understood now in the ‘formal’ courts and within community dispute resolution practices? Are women carers rewarded as wives and mothers via bequeathable wealth or remunerated as paid domestic workers?

The papers address a range of facets to the research.

Ann Stewart: Who Cares for Older Women in Africa? Understanding the research findings in the context of ageing and gender-based policy frameworks.

Caring has been the subject of much gender and development based advocacy in recent times. It has challenged mainstream productivist policy making which ignores the role of social reproduction. This approach sits uneasily alongside the prevalent view that the African family can, and indeed should, take responsibility for its members despite anxieties that this institution is severely weakened and a context in which the social infrastructure to support life course approaches to ageing are not in place. The research findings reveal that care labour is rooted in wider kinship relationships and reward is closely associated with relations of property and the use of bequeathable assets.

Jenny Lander: Framing the Social Significance of Woman-to-Woman Marriage: A Critical Literature Review

David Ngira Otieno: Legal Pluralism in Kenya and the Meaning of Marriage