Kenyan Women Tea Farm Workers - Academic Research

By: Sophie Warth

        Women in Kenya make up half of the workforce, yet their contribution to agriculture and other sectors is looked down upon because of historic gender discrimination from the colonial era. Land ownership and advancement in the agricultural sector often ignore women, leaving them with no voice in the workplace when they already lack a voice in public and at home.^[1] 

Land access and control uniquely demonstrates the gender disparity in tea production in Kenya. In 2024, Agnes and Opollo investigated gender equity in land access and control in the Singorwet ward of Bomet County in Kenya. They first review the policies in Kenya that exist to, theoretically, improve gendered access to land ownership. Three important legislative documents, the Land Act, the Constitution, and the Land Policy, from 2012, 2010, and 2009, respectively, address equal rights to land for men and women.^[2] However, Kenya’s government struggles to enforce this legal claim to equality, and public awareness of this stipulation in these three pieces of legislation remains low.

Agnes and Opollo conducted interviews with men and women who work on tea farms, a total of 532 people. This included farmers, laborers, managers, and factory staff. 80% of farm laborers interviewed were women, whereas only 19% of tea farmers were women. Women are the majority of the labor force, yet few hold positions of power and authority, such as farmers who own land. Ultimately, this research found that women had minimal access to land or control over decision-making, in particular related to finances. Women with reproductive labor at home correlated with being unable to vie for elected positions. Time became the most costly commodity. Men held the majority as land owners and decision makers, pointing to the depth of gender issues in tea farming.

        Focusing on smallholder farmers, Bülow and Sørensen in 1993 conducted a study in the Kericho District. In the Kericho District, tea is the most important cash crop in the region, which is why Bülow and Sørense focused on this region, and demonstrates how Agnes and Opollo’s work in Bomet County in 2024 continues issues from over 20 years prior.^[3] This research contributes to feminist scholarship in making gender visible, showing how gender intersects with issues of development in contract smallholder tea farms.

Contract farming, also known as outgrower schemes, is when smallholders focus on growing export crops to fulfill a contract. In contract farming, a large agriculture business provides services such as processing the tea at a factory, in exchange for the smallholder farmer using their land and labor to grow the product specifically for the large business’ use. The farmers are usually men, often because women are kept out of land ownership. This also means that while their product is subject to quality control by the larger corporation, the farmer still controls their own labor and land. Contract farming specifically has widened the gender gap in tea production; agri-businesses do not want to hire female farmers, and Bülow and Sørense found that many husbands would see this as a threat to their position of power if their wife started tea farming independently..

        Bülow and Sørensen discovered that smallholder farmers relied entirely on the nuclear family for tea labor in half of their respondents, employed part-time laborers in one third of their sample, or employed full-time permanent laborers in 15% of their sample. In poorer farming households, outgrower schemes added to women’s burdens. Now, women find it difficult to do all necessary tasks, such as child care, domestic work, and growing maize to feed their families. Women have become the main source of labor for tea outgrower schemes. Tensions between women in this study and their husbands affected tea production, with tensions especially around the control of profits. Ultimately, women have less and less power over the profits resulting from their labor because their husbands are the owners of the land. This imbalance of power dynamics between men and women in tea farming continues to be found in Waiganjo and Ngundo’s study.

The theme of reproductive and productive labor for women tea workers continues in this literature review, across every study included. In a survey study by Makone et al. in 2017, respondents overall found that the women workers performed more roles than their male counterparts, both on the farm and at home.^[4] This study focused on Embu and Murang’a Counties in Kenya and their small-scale tea farmers. The respondents were mostly women, at 53.6%. These women report having the most laborious and time-consuming roles, including tea plucking, with 36.2% of women compared to 6.5% of men. Any roles that required additional skills, such as nursery jobs, land preparation, or pruning, were mostly carried out by men. Even though women were conducting most of the hard labor on the tea farm and putting in the most hours, their husbands were the ones to collect and receive pay slips. Men had control over the fertilizers and finances. The men in a household controlled the women’s wages and other work benefits, leaving them without individual power socially or financially. Only being able to access the benefits of employment through a father or husband increased gender discrimination, as women were disconnected from their own work. Makone et al. recommend educational workshops on gender equality to encourage women to collect their own wages and stop men from doing so. This would be one step in moving towards eliminating gender discrimination in tea plantations.

        The fight between productive and reproductive labor responsibilities for women in Kenya proved impossible in 2017, and is still true today. Given the proximity of Uganda and Kenya, Waiganjo and Ngundo chose to investigate both countries' tea production in 2024.^[5] They conducted a study on gender challenges for rural women’s roles in tea production, based in both Kenya and Uganda. For this literature review, I will focus on the parts of this research that apply to Kenya’s women tea workers. Waiganjo and Ngundo also focused on land ownership issues with gender. Although women make up the majority of the tea labor force in Kenya, they have limited access to land ownership, an economic disparity made worse by low wages and limited educational opportunities. Waiganjo and Ngundo argue that these factors, income, education, and class, compound the vulnerabilities of being a woman in the tea sector in Kenya. This, in turn, limits their full participation in the tea industry, even as individuals whom the industry relies on.

Women face poor working conditions and the impossible balance between productive and reproductive labor. If a woman attempts to buy land to start a tea farm of her own, credit facilities rarely give the same credit to women as they do to their male counterparts. This further restricts a rural woman’s access to participating in the tea sector. Waiganjo and Ngundo conclude with a recommendation for the Kenya Tea Development Agency to revise policies, specifically to promote equitable access to leadership roles and training, as well as offering education on gender discrimination and its impact on the entire community and tea sector. Sustainable development will only happen if women’s visibility and agency in the tea sector increase.

Horrificially, women face gender-based violence on tea farms in Kenya, only further invisibilizing their experiences and pushing them to the sidelines of a sector that relies entirely on their labor. OXFAM and the Wangu Kanja Foundation collaborated to research and highlight the survivors of gender-based violence on Kenyan tea estates.^[6] Specifically, this paper shares their stories in the women’s own voices to combat the invisibility that plagues their lives.

Women on tea estates face hazardous work conditions, instability in their jobs, and sexual and gender-based violence. This case study highlights the voices of five women who lived and worked on tea estates in Kericho. Their stories serve as a call to action for people across the food chain, from consumers to executives. The women in these case studies demonstrate resilience and dignity in the face of unimaginable challenges.

Normalized abuse creates exploitative relationships between the women and their supervisors, further perpetuating a culture of silence and fear. Speaking out would result in losing their jobs, which they cannot afford. Furthermore, their employment status often falls under casual employment agreements, temporary positions, without healthcare or paid sick leave. Even the tea estate run childcare comes at a pay cut for the woman working to support her children. If a woman is pregnant, they are often dismissed immediately when they reveal their pregnancy, putting their reproductive lives and health at risk and in conflict with their jobs and financial stability. Stress and fear control every aspect of their lives as laborers, mothers, and women who live at their workplace. Rather than summarizing the stories of Grace, Jackie, Cecilia, Scholastica, and Mercy, I suggest readers look at this resource themselves to see these women’s stories in their own words.

Unilever and Kenyan Women Tea Workers

        Despite the gap in scholarship surrounding Kenyan tea farming, the news media has begun to tell the stories of Kenyan women tea farmers, in particular regarding their working conditions. While the scholarship focuses on issues of gender and its impact on the women’s livelihoods, the news media has exposed issues with agri-businesses taking advantage of their workers, or leaving them unproductive. This includes the conglomerate Unilever, a multinational consumer packaged goods corporation with its headquarters in London.

Dominic Kirui in 2021 reported about Unilever’s tea business in Kenya for the EqualTimes, an online news and opinion website with the express goal of representing voices misrepresented or left out of mainstream media. Unilever owns 20 tea estates and eight factories in Kenya as of 2021. In 2015, Unilever introduced tea picking machines, leading to many women losing their jobs. One machine is operated by two workers and can harvest hundreds of kilograms of leaves at a rate much quicker than a person. However, these machines do not operate at the same level of quality as skilled laborers, as they can only pick larger, older leaves and leave behind the delicate, younger leaves, which are more desirable. In 2016, Kenya’s Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered tea plantations to increase wages by 30%. However, Unilever said this was not a change the company could afford. Instead, they issued voluntary redundancies to 11,000 workers in 2018. The union, however, claims that these redundancies were not voluntary. James Finlays let go of 716 employees in 2020, all pointing to the main issue: mechanization as an excuse to let go of employees rather than raise their salaries. The majority of those affected by this excuse and exploitation by tea companies have left 30,000 women without jobs and counting.^[7]

A recent controversy with Unilever left Kenyan women tea workers without jobs. The Oxford Human Rights Hub highlighted this controversy, reported by Sayantan Bhattacharyya and Moksh Ranawat. A group of Kenyan tea plantation workers filed a human rights complaint at the United Nations against Unilever. Unilever failed to protect its employees from violence in 2007 following an election in Kenya suspected of fraud. More than 1000 workers were assaulted because Unilever failed to protect its workers.^[8] The Kisii ethnic group in Kenya comprises most of the tea laborers, one of the minorities being targeted by the Kalenjin after the election in 2007.

Caroline Kimeu in the Guardian also reported on this issue between Kenyan tea workers and Unilever. The human rights complaint was filed in 2020, and in 2023, Unilever agreed to pay 77 tea workers who were attacked by armed assailants at the plantation. Unilever claimed it did not fail in its duty to care for its employees and their families. However, employees reported having PTSD and physical ailments from the attacks. Unilever only provided a month's wage for their suffering, which was not enough. In paying the 77 tea workers, a step is made towards justice. While Unilever did not comment on these most recent payments, they had sold the Kericho tea plantation in 2022.^[9]

Kenyan women tea workers face the impossible task of balancing reproductive and productive labor, remaining both the backbone of the household and the essential laborers for the tea sector. Unequal access to land ownership and gender-based violence compound this issue, pushing these women to their limits, often at the cost of either their household’s finances or family’s health. This literature review aims to reveal the experiences of these women, both in the unacceptable burdens placed on these women and in the current gap in scholarship about their livelihoods.