Women's empowerment in their relationships with men was the theme of an interesting report of a qualitative study with three groups of Kenyan women (Friedman & Todd, 1994). Kenya, the authors described as a country undergoing at the time a rapid transition from a rural traditional way of life to a modern urbanised one, with still one of the highest birth rates in the world (there are a number of references to poverty in Kenya in the Voices of the Poor report). One group of women participants (the lower class city group) were working as cleaners at the university or in hotels in Nairobi. All had been born and grew up in rural areas but had moved to the city to find a job to support their families, and were on low incomes. The second group (the middle class city group) were working in Nairobi as secretaries, librarians, teachers and travel agents, earning salaries 10-20 times higher than those in the first group. The third group (a rural group) lived in one remote village on the shore of a lake in a semi-desert area, reliant primarily on goat herding and fishing, leading a traditional life. Partly because it was considered intrusive to ask people directly about their personal lives, the indirect technique was used of asking each women to tell a story about a picture (taken from the TAT, the projective Thematic Apperception Test) depicting two African figures, a man looking forward and away, with a woman behind him holding his arms and looking at him, a picture that generally elicits stories of interpersonal conflicts in the relationship between a man and a woman.
Whether one believes that the resulting stories represent people's wishes, stereotypes, projections of their own beliefs and views, or something about the reality of their own lives, it was the case that the stories told by women in the three groups tended to be very different. Over two-thirds of the stories from the lower class city group were about separation in which the man wanted to get away and the woman was the one trying to solve the problem, reach a compromise, apologise, generally showing persistence, submission and obedience. Compared to the other two groups, that group of women was seen by the authors as showing characteristics of strength and resilience in the face of poverty and loss of traditional life, but without having the legitimate, socially granted power to determine one's own fate economically, socially, or politically. As Miller (1988) said of another group of poor women.
They impressed us greatly with their strength for these women were doing almost the impossible, nurturing and educating their children despite poverty, and doing it with dignity, gentleness, and often elegance. At the same time they had little power to change things, to see that their own needs were met, to have someone listen to them in a respectful way (J.B. Miller, 1988, cited by Friedman & Todd, 1994, p. 543).
In contrast women in the middle classes told stories in which the heroine was usually portrayed as strong and in control of a situation, frequently one in which the man had some problem (sickness, criminality) towards which the woman was supportive, helping or comforting. Only one in five of their stories was of the kind dominant in the lower class city group. Stories told by women in the rural group were mainly short, simple, optimistic, and focused on children – the desire for a child, sorrow over the loss of a child, or unhappiness about barrenness. Almost all described love and togetherness between the couple. None of them ended with the break up of the relationship and most had a happy ending, usually referring to happiness over a child. From their more general observations of the rural women and their village, the authors suggested that rural women, although they were as poor as the lower class city women, or more so, and although their husbands were often absent, they appeared happier and more secure than lower class city women, spending much of their time in the company of other women, enjoying each other's company, exhibiting confidence, and taking care of each other's children with warmth and pride. The picture they painted was of traditional women empowered in certain domains of their lives even though in their roles as wives they might lack autonomy.