Title: Protest, Patriarchal Bargains, and the Politics of Reproduction: Women's Collective Action Against Alcohol Abuse in Narok West, Kenya
Authors: Musiimenta Nancy, Ahumuza Audrey
Volume: 10
Issue: 4
Pages: 131-139
Publication Date: 2026/04/28
Abstract:
This study examined the dynamics of women's collective action against alcohol abuse in Narok West Sub-County, Kenya, situating the analysis within the theoretical frameworks of patriarchal bargain theory and the politics of reproduction. Drawing on a mixed-methods cross-sectional survey of 300 purposively and randomly selected women, the study investigated the sociodemographic determinants of protest participation, the mechanisms through which gendered grievances were mobilized into organized collective action, and the reproductive and domestic health consequences that precipitated women's activism. Univariate analysis revealed that the majority of respondents (65.3%) were married, 34.7% were aged 36-45 years, and 44.7% were subsistence farmers with household incomes below KES 10,000 per month, situating the protest constituency firmly among economically marginalized rural women. Bivariate chi-square analysis established statistically significant associations between protest participation and key variables including direct alcohol harm exposure (?² = 29.18, p < 0.001), membership in women's groups (?² = 24.67, p < 0.001), and domestic violence experience (?² = 22.34, p < 0.001). Exploratory factor analysis with principal component analysis (PCA) identified three latent dimensions underlying women's motivations for protest: collective grievance (37.0% variance, eigenvalue = 4.81), patriarchal bargaining (25.2% variance, eigenvalue = 3.27), and reproductive harm (22.6% variance, eigenvalue = 2.94), together accounting for 84.8% of total variance. Binary logistic regression confirmed that collective grievance scores (OR = 2.630, p < 0.001), membership in women's groups (OR = 3.284, p < 0.001), and reproductive harm scores (OR = 2.416, p < 0.001) were the strongest predictors of protest participation, with the model achieving a Nagelkerke R² of 0.558. The findings demonstrate that women's anti-alcohol protests in Narok West constituted a form of strategic agency operating within, rather than against, prevailing patriarchal structures - a negotiated form of resistance that prioritized household stability, child welfare, and reproductive health outcomes. The study recommends integrating gender-responsive alcohol policy with community-based women's empowerment programmes, institutionalizing women's reproductive health grievances within county governance frameworks, and leveraging existing women's group networks as entry points for sustained collective action.