From barrier breakers to trailblazers: The journey of women's education in Kenya
From left: Dr Nancy Macharia, Senator Gloria Orwoba,Sr Teresa Nduku, Dr Lydia Nzomo and Prof Olive Mugenda.
The concept of formal education is foreign to her. In almost nine decades of life, Kanyiva Kitune, a resident of Mwingi, Kitui County, has never set foot in a school.
Like her mother before her and many other young women, she was only a few years into her teenage years when her in-laws came knocking. Although she misses it, she cannot help but imagine what the inside of a classroom looks, feels and smells like.
"During our time, the most important thing was to find a husband. Once I was married, I took over the household chores, but I also learnt how to thatch a grass hut, make sisal ropes, identify medicinal herbs and midwifery".
In stark contrast, Lolitta Amunga sits at home in Nairobi, connecting with her classmates via the Internet on her laptop. Had she been born seven or eight decades earlier, her reality might be similar to Ms Kitune's, but times have changed and she has never known a world without the internet and technology.
At 13, she may not fully understand how far education has come for women, but she appreciates the ease of access today.
"E-learning has made education fun and exciting. At school we spend many hours in the computer lab doing research and learning new things. During holidays we use apps like Edmodo to interact with our teachers and get assignments.
However, access to education has not always been easy. Heather Munyi, a retired teacher living in Nanyuki, took her primary school exams the same year the country gained independence. But she was one of the lucky few who made it to school when education for women was a luxury.
"My father was a missionary, he valued education. He sent my brothers and me to school to pursue our dreams. We walked barefoot, it was a long and arduous journey. After school, I had to walk more kilometres to collect firewood and to the stream to fetch water".
Fatuma Chege and Daniel Sifuna in their publication Girls' and Women's Education in Kenya: Gender Perspectives and Trends, document how the government set up the Ominde Commission in 1964 to review the education system, leading to an increase in the number of men and women in formal education.
Free primary education
Among many other reforms, the commission recommended free primary education. It would be a decade before education was declared free for children in standards one to four, and free for the entire primary cycle in 1978, but only for three years before the government abandoned the reforms.
By 1990, the government had begun to recognise gender disparities in education, particularly in the quality and accessibility of women's education at secondary and tertiary levels. The 1990 Economic Survey shows that girls accounted for only about 40 per cent of the total secondary school enrolment of 640,735. It also shows that there were 17,000 males compared to 7,264 females, and 1,331 males and 444 females at the undergraduate level.
The government then took steps to address these challenges, such as holding the National Conference on the Girl Child in Nyeri in 1992 and the National Symposium on Girls' Education in Machakos in 1994.
"The Machakos Symposium led to the establishment of a Gender and Education Task Force and the Girl Child Project. Other outcomes included the formulation of guidelines for the re-admission of teenage mothers, affirmative action by lowering the university entrance mark for women by one point, and the closing of the gender gap in teacher training colleges, where a wing of the Kenya Science Teachers College male dormitory was converted into female accommodation," write Chege and Sifuna.
These policy changes led to an increase in the number of female students at all levels. The late President Mwai Kibaki reintroduced free primary education when he came to power in 2002, leading to a further increase in girls' enrolment in primary schools.
The Ministry of Education now has an established sex-disaggregated database. In 2022, Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu indicated that 50.33 per cent of learners sat the secondary exams compared to 49.67 per cent of learners, while at primary level, 50.32 per cent of learners were boys and 49.6 per cent were girls, indicating that the gender gap has been closed.
Boys significantly outperformed girls at both levels. The 2023 Economic Survey shows that of the government-sponsored students placed in universities, middle colleges and Tvets for 2022/2023, the number of females is 129,495 while the number of males is 126,116. In universities, the number of female students increased by 5.5 per cent to 240,000, while the number of male students decreased by 3.5 per cent to 322,000 in 2022/2023. In TVET, the number of female students was 207,000 in the same period, compared to 241,000 male students.
Despite this progress, 60 years after independence, there are still girls who are denied access to education due to the persistence of regressive cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), beading and early marriage. *Nashipae would have become one of those statistics; married off after her circumcision in West Pokot, had she not escaped the grip of her nuclear family and ended up with a caring aunt.
"In 2016, when I was only 10 years old, my parents subjected me to the most severe form of FGM, which involves sealing the vaginal opening. It affected my urination and menstruation until 2022 when I underwent a de-fibulation operation at Kapenguria County Referral Hospital. My education was affected because I often missed school to seek medical attention," said Nashipae, who is now in Form One.
Major threat
Teenage pregnancy is the other major threat to the gains made in girls' education. If a pregnant girl does not resume her studies, a vicious cycle of poverty is perpetuated. According to a report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Health, Samburu County has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. At 50 per cent, it is three times the national average of 15 per cent, ahead of West Pokot at 36 per cent, Marsabit at 29 per cent and Narok at 28 per cent.
"To tackle teenage pregnancy, we need a holistic approach, from direct parental involvement to the involvement of religious leaders and an age-appropriate sex education programme. It is extremely important that men are at the centre of these conversations, especially in high-incidence areas," said former Teachers Service Commission (TSC) chairperson Dr Lydia Nzomo.
In some cases, teenage pregnancies are caused by reproductive poverty. Amref Health Kenya puts the country's period poverty rate at 65 per cent. "Two out of three sanitary pad users in rural Kenya get them from sexual partners and one in four girls do not associate menstruation with pregnancy, highlighting how menstrual hygiene management is linked to gender inequality and other underlying risks." The Ministry of Gender also points out that poor girls miss 20 per cent of school days in a year due to lack of sanitary towels. The 2016 amendment to the Basic Education Act mandates the government to provide free, quality sanitary towels in public schools.
However, Senator Gloria Orwoba, who has been pushing government to increase funding for free sanitary towels and female hygiene products in public schools, admitted to the Nation in February that there are gaps in the 2016 law.
"It doesn't give the frequency and the framework, and there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in terms of regulations and legal work, such as procurement so that manufacturing can be part of this solution."
Climate change is also a new hurdle for girls to overcome, especially in arid and semi-arid countries. Sister Teresa Nduku of the Mary Immaculate Girl Child Rescue Centre in Suguta Mar-Mar, Samburu, confirmed in December that due to the biting drought, many girls have been married off for food and money to help their families survive.
Much has also changed for the better for female teachers. The 2023 Economic Survey shows that in 2022, the number of female primary school teachers increased by 0.6 per cent to 119,185, while in secondary schools the number increased by 4.8 per cent to 124,992. The 1975 Economic Survey shows that a year earlier there were 77,656 primary teachers and 5,504 secondary teachers.
Dr Nzomo recalled how female teachers were subjected to harsh patriarchal rules during this period, before a new code of conduct came into force in 1976.
"Before 1975, a teacher who was not officially married but became pregnant would be banned and then suspended. The code was so strict that even a newly married teacher who gave birth before the end of nine months was also disciplined because she had to attach a copy of her marriage certificate to her application for maternity leave."
"She also needed her husband's formal consent before a transfer request would be granted; this made it impossible for women to leave abusive and broken marriages, coupled with the fact that married teachers were not entitled to a house allowance."
On women's leadership, Dr Nzomo opined that a conducive working environment enables women to compete effectively with men without the need for affirmative action, insisting that women are just as capable as men. And her words ring true: at the helm of the TSC today is a woman, Nancy Macharia, who was appointed chief executive officer in 2015. Women are also making their mark in teachers' unions; Rosalia Mkanjala is deputy general secretary of the Kenya National Teachers Union, while Catherine Wambilyanga is the national gender secretary of the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers.
At the university level, women have also achieved significant milestones. Wangari Maathai became Kenya's first female professor in 1977 after being appointed as an associate professor, while Leah Marangu was the first woman in East Africa to be appointed as a full professor.
She taught Home Economics at Kenyatta University (KU) and rose to become Head of the Department of Home Economics in 1988, the same year she was appointed full professor. Prof Marangu was also the first Kenyan woman to head a university after she was appointed Vice-Chancellor (VC) of Africa Nazarene University (ANU) in 1996, starting the position with less than 70 students, but retiring in December 2017 when the student population was over 4000.
In 2002, Prof Rosalind Mutua became the first VC of Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology, a private university and the first in East Africa specifically for women. Four years later, in March, Prof Olive Mugenda of KU made history in Kenya by becoming the first female VC of a public university. According to the 2023 Economic Survey, there are 73 public and private chartered universities and constituent colleges.
Of these, 10 have female vice-chancellors, five in the public sector and the other half in the private sector.
Nine children and many grandchildren later, and despite being illiterate, Ms Kitune believes education is a game changer for women.
"I can see a huge difference between the lives of my daughters who dropped out of school and the one who became a doctor. She takes care of herself and the rest of us. Had I known, I would have urged all my girls to complete their studies.
As for Dr Nzomo, she urges female teachers at all levels to embrace technology and continuous learning to ensure they are up to date with the changing realities of the modern age. And while they are at it, she urges them to always put the needs of the students first, because in their absence, the whole system does not exist.
*Name changed to protect the identity of the minor.
