Indigenous Languages and their Role in Women's Economic Empowerment

Although the linguistic approaches to the functions of language emphasise its role in the maintenance of social structures, it is important to bear in mind that language is never neutral and always represents reality from a biased perspective. Deviating from the Saussurean structuralist approach that claims that linguistic signs are arbitrary, linguistic anthropologists and ethnographers disentangle various facets of language that demonstrate that merely viewing language as a system whose sole purpose is communication fails to capture various structures, norms and taboos encoded in language that project reality from a biased perspective. In many communities in Kenya, which are overwhelmingly patriarchal, language is bound to represent social structures that are products of the patriarchal order. Against this background, our goal in this paper is to examine how the mainstream languages in Kenya limit women’s access to information and services critical to their economic empowerment. We further argue that while Indigenous languages are regarded as the most accessible and logical means of communication amongst most rural women, these languages have been neglected to the extent that it appears as though they are not well-equipped to address various challenges that impede women’s economic empowerment. They are hardly reformed to rid them of sexism, misrepresentations and under-representation, which makes women invisible and hence marginal participants in the economic affairs in their communities. We argue that these disadvantages notwithstanding, indigenous languages are still the best option for empowering rural women. However, there is a need for linguistic and cultural reforms aimed at minimising the possibility of these languages being misused to entrench outdated gender stereotypes or to enforce cultural norms that hinder women’s economic empowerment. The data for the paper is derived through a literature review guided by the Feminist Literary Theory as expounded by Kolodny (1980). The paper posits that Women's Economic Empowerment is best achieved by utilising their indigenous languages, which is their tool of self-expression.