Women, Modernity, and Stress: Three Contrasting Contexts for Change in East Africa

Abstract

Women in East Africa more often confront change and modernization in vicarious and / or indirect ways; men more often participate directly in bounded institutions such as bureaucracies, factories, or schools. This differential experience of postcolonial change means that the family and local community as well as the domestic subsistence economy are important in women's adaptations. To understand modernization and the stress which may accompany it, three groups of Kenya women are compared. A group of A group of A baluyia women living in both rural and urban settings in Kenya is characterized by both relatively low modernity scores and low psychophysiological stress scores. A group of urban Kikuyu women participating in a city market have higher modernity scores yet relatively low stress reports. A third group of rural Kikuyu women engaged in cash cropping with frequently absent husbands have both high modernity and high stress scores. Each group of women differs in their exposure to and participation in modernizing institutions, and their independence and autonomy from their husbands and husbands' kin. These factors, along with age and formal education, influence women's modernity and reported psychophysiological stress reports. The importance of viewing such formal test scores within varying sociocultural contexts is stressed.