This article is inspired by the dismal number of women elected in the Kenyan 2013 general elections. It is my hope that the next general elections will present a different outcome. All my love to the women of Kenya and happy International Women's Day.
The immediate Kenyan Parliament (10th Parliament) had 16 female members of parliament and 207 male members of parliament. The total number of members of parliament was
213 with the Gatundu North seat being vacant. The 9th Parliament had 9
female members and 201 male
members. The total number of members being 210. The 8th Parliament had only 4 elected female members and 12 nominated
female members. The total number
of female members of Parliament was 18 and the male members of parliament were 204. The total number of members of parliament was
222. This translated to 8.1% women representation.
Women constitute between 52% and 60%
of the registered voters. Women representation in the political arena has been
very poor since independence. In 1963 there was no woman elected to Parliament.
In 1969 two women were elected. In 1974
six women were elected. In 1979
there were five elected female members
of Parliament. In 1983 three
women were elected and in 1988
two women were elected. In 1992 six
women were elected.
This representation shows that indeed
women have had a dismal representation in parliament since the year 1997. The
1992 elections represented a worse representation than the subsequent
parliaments. This could have been one of the key factors taken into
consideration during the drafting of the Constitution. Though women form the majority to the voter population they lack adequate
representation. This has been due
to their socialization into believing that only men should indulge in politics.
Very few women have been elected to parliament over the years.
Over the years women who aspired for
parliamentary positions as well as the Presidential positions have been
discouraged from pursuing their political ambitions. Pendo Muninzwa indicates
in her article “Kenya's General Elections, Women's Poor Performance”
that “when a woman enters into politics she does not cease to be a woman.
Her femininity remains and she has to be more diligent than a man in order to
prove herself as an able leader”.
Despite there being a steady rise of
female members of parliament in the three successive Parliaments, it is obvious
that the number of male parliamentarians is constantly high and steady.
Female
versus Male candidates and elected representatives
In 1992, out of 19 female candidates,
4 were elected. This compares to 940 male candidates, out of which 182 were
elected. In 1997, there were 2497 male candidates out of which 204 were
elected, compared to 50 female candidates out of which 4 were elected. In the
year 2002, there were 44 female candidates, 10 were elected. This election saw
a total number of 991 male candidates out of which 201 were elected. In the
year 2007, there was an impressive increase to 269 female candidates out of
which 16 were elected. Conversely, the country had 2278 male candidates and 207
of them were elected. I shall in the coming days issue a comprehensive analysis
of the 2013 general elections and compare the figures.
These figures indicate that the more
women candidates there are, such as in the 2007 General Elections, the more chance
they stand of being elected. We must
therefore place out women in electable positions, we must employ the politics
of presence to favour women.
Another important point to note is
that the number of male candidates vying in the year 2007 declined (as opposed
to the steady increase in the number of male candidates over the years) because
of the coalition formed to offset the 24 year KANU regime. In the same year,
the number of women candidates declined from 50 to 44. This shows that
coalitions and party mergers in Kenya have been disadvantageous to women. In
most cases, the positions are handed
out by political party leaders, hence the correlation between the decline of
the number of male and female candidates.
Kenyan Political Parties and the
electoral system (before the promulgation of the Constitution 2010) were
structural barriers to women's political participation. The ballot box on its own without supportive mechanisms cannot be an efficient way of ensuring women’s presence in elective public bodies. The culture of accepting more women in
politics does not yet exist in Kenya. This is evidenced by the dismal number of women candidates which
translates to the number of those elected. We must reinforce the politics of
presence to favour women. The start has already been set by the
Constitution and guidelines given to ensure that women have an equal political
participation footing. The onus as indicated by the Supreme Court of Kenya in
Advisory Opinion number 2 of 2012 lies with the next Parliament. In my opinion,
the key lies with political parties.
The gap between legal and factual quality in the area of power and
decision-making is so wide that women’s interests and concerns are not
adequately represented at policy levels and women cannot influence key
decisions in social, economic and political areas that affect society as a whole.
They lack the critical mass. Ideally, the political parties should take
the initiative in seeing to it that women emerge in substantial numbers onto
the political landscape. If the
experience of other countries such as India, South Africa, Sweden and Spain is
anything to go by, considerable voting
advantage flows from fielding large
numbers of women candidates.
International experience shows that
both voluntary and obligatory methods
have been used to correct the under-representation of women in decision-making
structures. This has been our Kenyan experience. In South Africa the
breakthrough came when the African National Congress adopted an internal
statute requiring that 30% of its candidates for the National Assembly be
women. This figure has since been raised
to 33.3%. The adoption of Proportional
Representation in the Constitution made it relatively easy to achieve this
minimum proportion; after the party membership through their branch representatives
had voted for all the candidates on the ANC lists, so that those with the most
votes were at the top and those with the least at the bottom. Adjustments were
made in the ranking to ensure that at
least three out of every bloc of ten names on the list were those of women. This resulted in a number of women moving up
the lists in a manner which respected the ranking given to each of them by the
branch representatives.
In India, the issue of women’s
representation in public political life has been on the agenda for a number of
years. The result has been that the
Constitution has required since 1992 that not less than one-third of all seats in every Panchayat (village
assembly) and every Municipality be reserved for women. Since 1998 a constitutional amendment
requiring at least one-third of the total number of seats in the Lower House to
be filled by women has been tabled before parliament. Although all the major parties have agreed to
it in principle, no consensus has been
reached as to how the requirement of one-third is to be met and the Bill has
not yet been passed. It is
particularly difficult where Members of Parliament are elected in single-member constituencies to
establish that one Member in three be female. Various systems of rotation have
accordingly been proposed. Another
problem has been how to ensure that women from communities referred to as
backward communities and scheduled castes be included, as well as women from
the group referred to as Anglo-Indian.
The equal participation of women and men in public life is one of
the cornerstones of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly in 1979 and in force since 1981. Article 7 of CEDAW provides: State parties shall take all
appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life of the country and
in particular shall ensure to women, on equal terms to men, the right:
a) To vote in all elections and public
referenda and to be eligible for election to all publicly elected bodies;
b) To participate in the formulation of
government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and
perform all public functions at all levels of government;
c)
To
participate in non-government organizations and associations concerned with the
public and political life of the country.
Article 81(2) (b) of the Kenyan
Constitution provides that the electoral system shall comply with the principle
that not more than two-thirds of the members of the elective pubic bodies shall
be of the same gender. The Constitution however does not provide how this
should conclusively be achieved. It provides for quotas. As we have seen, these
quotas do not guarantee the realisation of this principle. Therefore, in terms of progressive realisation, the
government should adopt policies, plans and programs with regard to achieving
this principle as advised by the Supreme Court.
The social impact of increased women
representation in Kenya
Women
have been marginalised in the political sphere in Kenya and their role in
contributing to national sustainable development ignored. Low representation of
the women in the political arena means that the Kenyan Republic is under
utilising its human resource base available for development. In addition, the
little or non- participation of women in the decision making process translates
to their perspectives being ignored. They lack the critical mass to advance
important social and economic issues affecting women and children
The social impact of increased women representation in Kenya
would, arguably, entail greater attention for the following agenda: childcare
policy, family policy, gender equality, social policy, land rights policy,
poverty alleviation policies, HIV/AIDS policy, sexual freedom policy, violence
against women policies and many more policies
It must
also be noted that there exists contrasting pictures of the effect of increased
women's representation. As demonstrated by other countries, where women are
present in 'critical mass' levels
in national parliaments, (generally agreed to be about 30%) the policy agenda shifts. It is opined
that this would be the same for the Kenyan parliament. Although it has been
argued that there is little evidence so far to suggest that increased women's
representation has altered policy outcomes to any significant degree.
This
notion must be dispelled by the Kenyan women parliamentarians when they meet
the critical mass level. Although, it
has been shown that gender policies have been greatly achieved in parliaments
that have had a high number of women representatives in Parliament in Kenya
such as the 9th and 10th Parliaments such as the Sexual Offences Act.
The 2013 General
Elections
The 2013
General elections has revealed that 14 15 women have been elected as Constituency
members (equivalent to the former MP’s in the old dispensation). The
Constitutional provision to have 47 elected Women Representatives has also been
realized. Sadly, Kenya has not elected a single female Governor or Senator. The
dream of having a female Head of State remains as such, a dream. Kenyans must
re-engineer their mindsets and accommodate the possibility of allowing women to
hold important positions in government. The Supreme Court of Kenya ordered the
next Parliament to ensure that the mechanisms required to ensure that not more
than two thirds of members in elective positions are of the same gender is implemented
on or before 27th August 2015. In the next elections therefore,
Kenyans must elect women to key positions or risk the cost that comes with an
expanded parliament should the two-thirds principle be fulfilled by way of
nominations.
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