The Cooperative Movement in Kenya: Women Only Cooperatives Their Potential for Women’s Empowerment and Enhancement of Gender-Just Peace | Biomedgrid

This paper is based on a review of secondary sources from academic articles. It describes how women owned and managed cooperatives hold potentials to empower women and to transform gender relations and as a path to achieving gender-just peace goal. Peace and social well-being are embedded within the cooperative movement's core values and principles. The paper suggests how cooperatives can and do effectively promote economic and social inclusion, a factor that can enhance elimination of friction among different social groups. This is because cooperative societies bring together various classes of people regardless of their socio- economic status as their agenda would be one only-“to share ideas, suggest and implement viable practices that are likely to bring development and uplift economic and social status of members”. For women the common bond would include sisterhood. The argument put forward is that cooperatives are powerful vehicles of social inclusion, political and economic empowerment of their members. The principles upon which the cooperative movement is built could harness awareness regarding the power of cooperatives particularly those owned by women in not only improving livelihoods but also making inroads by creating a conducive environment for gender –just peace.