Under a hot midday sun at the edge of the Mara Ripoi Conservancy — a 5,500-hectare swathe of land adjoining Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara National Reserve — a group of Maasai women sit under the shade of a gnarled Balanites aegyptiaca tree.
Their voices rise in the breeze, tentative at first, then firm. The scene marks the quiet dawn of a shift: women stepping into roles traditionally closed to them.
As one committee member, 29-year-old Everlyne Siololo, puts it, “This was hardly possible a few years ago … there were times when a woman’s voice was rarely heard.
In fact, some men still look down on uneducated women. They need to trust women more.”
A Changing Dynamic
Historically, in Maasailand — the semi-arid lands of southern Kenya where the Maasai have lived for generations — decisions over territory, cattle grazing, land leases, and conservancy governance fell almost exclusively to men.
Complex patriarchal traditions, land rights that defaulted to male heads, and a culture of male-dominated leadership created deep structural barriers to women’s participation.
Yet conservancy models — community-based areas of land set aside for wildlife protection and citizen land-use, often in partnership with tourism businesses — are also creating new pathways.
Mara Ripoi is one of the few conservancies in the greater Mara ecosystem where women hold administrative rights: making decisions on cattle grazing zones, financial matters, and employment opportunities — including whether jobs go to women.
In other parts of Kenya, too, women are emerging into leadership. Maasai women in Kajiado County are quietly rewriting their community’s future through environmental conservation.
The World Wildlife Fund-CARE Alliance also notes that in Kenya’s Amboseli landscape, women’s groups are leading nature-based enterprises, land restoration, and business ventures tied to conservation.
These converging trends mean we are witnessing not just better representation for women — but a new model of partnership where conservation, community, and gender equity intertwine.
Life Under The Big Sky
Siololo’s journey offers a vivid portrait of that transformation. She comes from a large polygamous family of 16 boys and 12 girls, yet she became the only sibling to obtain a diploma in tourism and wildlife management from Maasai Mara University.
Her father, encouraged by a local chief, urged her schooling — but even then, she was told: “You cannot become chief because you are too young, and you are a woman.”
Today, she works as a safari tour driver-guide with a partner company, Gamewatchers Safaris, which protects 16,000 hectares of community land.
The managing director, Mohanjeet Brar, says employing women “makes a significant impact, as their income is typically used to improve the livelihoods of their families.”
In the conservancy committee that governs Mara Ripoi, three of ten seats are now held by women: Siololo, her step-sister Norkishili Kayiaa (48, with seven children), and 23-year-old Margaret Tingisha.
They bring not just representation, but lived experience of both herding, household labor, school-runs, and governance. As Kayiaa says: “Previously, women here had no say, even in the sale of a family goat.”
Their day begins in the darkness, milking cattle, preparing children for school, then walking across the plains to meetings where grazing zones, tourism jobs, land leases, and revenue distribution are discussed. Siololo recalls narrowly dodging a cow’s kick that morning before heading to the committee meeting.
Conservancy And Community: How It Works
What makes this change more than symbolic is the structure of the conservancy: in essence, local collective land (often community ranches) is leased for conservation and tourism, while traditional cattle grazing continues under agreed rules.
The community then receives lease payments (in Ripoi’s case, about 3,400 Kenyan shillings per acre annually) and employment opportunities.
At Ripoi, the committee decides how the money is invested: schooling, health, business start-ups (for example, Tingisha’s beading business launched thanks to her 50-acre lease income).
Integration of women into decision-making helped open the door to family-benefits: “We think we would all agree that women often make better decisions on the use of funds in a household,” says Brar.
More broadly, the conservancy model in Kenya has grown rapidly: from some 6.3 million hectares in 2016 to around 7.3 million today. Community-run conservancies now cover 16% of Kenya’s land — a vital complement to national parks.
Breaking Constraints, Building Hope
For the Maasai women stepping into leadership, the constraints are real: entrenched gender norms, limited education, expectations to serve cattle and children before themselves, and the deep logic of past exclusion. Yet they are forging new paths.
Kayiaa says: “When such opportunities arise, they usually consider the boys … but when a goat gets lost at night, it is the women who look for it in the bushes despite the dangers from wild animals.”
And Siololo adds: “After college, I too wanted to become a chief … empowering a woman is about safeguarding community interests.” Their leadership reframes women’s labor — milking, grazing, beading, caring — as strategic, not incidental.
In the broader ecosystem, the ripple effects are tangible. When women secure income, schooling for children improves. Economic diversification reduces pressure on fragile rangelands. Decision-making becomes more inclusive. Wildlife and herders find a more balanced coexistence.
Possibilities Ahead
Still, as Siololo notes, full leadership is yet to come: “True, we have women committee members but what if a woman was the conservancy chairperson, treasurer or secretary?”
The next frontier lies in breaking the top roles. It lies in normalizing women’s full inclusion: in governance, in revenue distribution, in the highest levels of decision.
For the land and its people, the stakes are high. Pastoralists face shrinking grazing territories, climate stress, and population growth.
Wildlife corridors are under threat. Community conservancies are one of the most hopeful tools. They link heritage to habitat, livelihoods to landscapes. In Kenya’s model, women are increasingly central to this promise.
What This Means For Conservation And Society
When women from Indigenous communities step into formal leadership roles in conservation, the benefits are many and conjoined:
- Redistribution of power: shifting the conversation from “men manage lands” to “community — women and men — steward lands together.”
- Improved economic outcomes: research shows that women’s incomes are more likely to benefit children’s schooling and household welfare.
- Stronger community buy-in: inclusive governance leads to greater legitimacy and long-term stability.
- Better ecological outcomes: when local people see direct benefit from keeping wildlife and habitat intact, poaching and habitat loss decline.
A Hopeful Horizon
Standing beneath that great Balanites tree, where Siololo and her colleagues meet, one sees more than a committee meeting — one sees quiet transformation.
It is a tableau of women who once had limited voice, now scheduling board meetings. Who once moved only within the kraal, now allocate tourism revenue. Who once watched from the margins, now stand behind the table.
The story of Kenya’s Maasai women, stepping into land-leadership and conservation, is not just about one community or one reserve. It is a beacon. It says: heritage, culture, land, nature — they are strengthened when all voices are welcomed.
As Siololo’s husband, Evans Nchoe, reflects: “Educating girls and empowering women is changing Maasailand … We have a new generation of men that is closer to women than the previous one. Today, we sit down and consult.”
For Kenya — and for the world’s vast wild places where people live side by side with nature — that may be one of the most hopeful sentences of all.
Sources:
Reuters
Iucn
The Guardian
