Women need systems to work; their lives depend on it

The Kenya Women Parliamentary Association at Parliament Buildings on August 29, 2018.

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  1. Since Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta took power in 2013, almost all his appointees to parastatals and Cabinet positions have been men.

The gender rule debate has been going on since the 2010 Constitution was promulgated. Chief Justice David Maraga threw a spanner in the works when he recommended that Parliament be dissolved for its failure to meet the two-thirds gender rule.

Therefore, we must interrogate not just the Constitution's intent when it stipulated it, but also the commitment to achieving it.

 The first observation is that there is no goodwill from Kenya’s leadership in achieving this rule. Since Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta took power in 2013, almost all his appointees to parastatals and Cabinet positions have been men.

And as we saw with corruption, the rot starts from the top. You cannot convince a village committee to have at least a third of it being women if the President himself has set a different precedent.

Goodwill is important; Kenya isn't the first country to be faced with this gender problem. We are in the company of Finland, Denmark and Sweden. They even had what we call electoral gender quotas where each party has to have a certain percentage of female nominees.

 Gender representation

But unlike us, they did not have to be forced; everyone was committed to achieving gender representation and ensuring that that translates to the issues women face being dealt with.

But the debate in this country ignores that women's issues won't be solved by just electing women. A few days ago a woman gave birth outside Pumwani hospital as outraged Kenyans wondered where our woman representatives were. But maternal services are part of the Ministry of Health, not Esther Passaris’ docket.

This then means that for a woman in this country to live with dignity, she needs to have all institutions in the country work for rich and poor alike. We need women represented in Parliament, and we need all of Kenya's institutions to work for all Kenyans. The Kenyan woman's fate depends on it.