Mountain Women Of The World: Transformative Resilience And Gendered Power In The African Highlands

This commentary explores the lived experiences, leadership strategies and systemic challenges of mountain women in Kenya and Tanzania, drawing from participatory feminist research conducted under the global Mountain Women of the World initiative. By centring women’s narratives, this discussion highlights how women navigate exclusion from land rights, tourism economies and governance structures, while simultaneously leading grassroots innovations through cooperative farming, feminist tourism models and ancestral ecological knowledge. Framed through feminist political ecology and critical development studies, the argument challenges top-down development paradigms and advocates policy reforms that acknowledge mountain women not simply as vulnerable subjects, but rather as agents of climate resilience, cultural preservation and economic transformation. We argue for systemic shifts in governance, infrastructure and resource allocation to prioritise women’s leadership and knowledge in mountain regions, positioning them as central actors in the Anthropocene.