Globalization and patriarchy as challenges to gendered traditional salt making: The Uburu women’s experience

Abstract

Women all over the world suffer different forms of repression and underdevelopment due to some patriarchal structures. Patriarchy appears a universal phenomenon and a nightmare to women. In many instances, globalization worsens the already bad situations. Gender-based careers especially those that relate to women are prone to neglect and absence of advancement unlike those that relate to men. This study interrogates the Uburu women’s traditional salt industry as a victim of globalization and patriarchy; globalization that saturated local communities with imported and refined salt as a result of the use of modern technologies, and patriarchy that impeded the growth and development of the local salt industry as a result of cultural norms which hold down the women from being exposed to the use of modern technologies in salt making. In this context, globalization aggressively interlocks with patriarchy to weaken the resolve of the women in self-advancement. The result is the collapse of the gendered local salt industry which once was a source of women’s economic power.