The Feminist Ranch

A group of women in Umoja, Kenya started an all-female village because they were ostracized from their community. Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community. Initiated by Rebecca Lolosoli, the village--initially the result of abandonment--has become a safe-haven for women and girls who live in fear of forced marriage, rape, and social subjugation. They became so respected that troubled women, some beaten, some trying to get divorced, started showing up in this little village in northern Kenya. Lolosoli was even invited by the United Nations to attend a recent world conference on gender empowerment in New York. I think this is a working, viable argument in favor of the critical need for gender exclusive spaces so that women, hoping for personal, spritual, and emotional freedom, can realize and claim their human rights.