Seeing conservation through a woman’s eyes

Once we begin listening, the priorities of Loita Maasai women are neither abstract nor difficult to understand. They ask for sustainable, income-generating livelihoods; education for their children; protection from human-wildlife conflict for themselves and others; and recognition of their knowledge.

Conservation cannot be separated from the rest of a Maasai woman's life. She may respect wildlife and understand the importance of protecting the forest, but she must also feed her family, pay school fees, and buy uniforms for her children. She lives with the impacts of crop-raiding animals, including baboons, as well as other forms of human-wildlife conflict. Conservation cannot expect her continued support while ignoring the risks to her community.

Over the past eight years, Ilkimpa Community Conservation Association (ICCA-Loita), with support from IFAW, has mobilised and facilitated approximately 700 women into eight legally registered self-help groups and one cooperative. The women engage in beadwork jewellery production, bullock fattening, and sheep and goat enterprises.

Income helps a woman provide food, pay school fees, and buy uniforms. It also gives her greater confidence and room to participate in decisions. When more women participate, once overlooked voices gain collective weight.

When ICCA-Loita speaks of empowering women, we do not mean giving strength or knowledge to women who have none. Their strength already exists. What has been missing are the conditions through which it can become visible and influential, including economic opportunity, collective organisation, recognition, and space to speak.

Women have also carried some of the hidden costs of coexistence. Before ICCA-Loita was established, wives, mothers, and sisters worried about husbands and sons involved in poaching and the possibility of arrest, imprisonment, injury, or death. Women are grateful that this chapter has largely closed and that several of their loved ones have moved from poaching into conservation careers, including becoming rangers.

The presence of women community rangers adds another dimension to this change. These women are showing what becomes possible when a community invests in its girls and offers equal opportunities. Their work is changing not only who carries out conservation, but also how the community understands the abilities and potential of its daughters.

Livelihood support must ultimately lead towards economic independence rather than permanent dependence on conservation projects. IFAW's support for women's empowerment through beadwork production has established an important foundation. Our desire now is for the women to market their work more directly and develop a wider range of sustainable, conservation-conscious livelihoods.