Kenya's women leaders look to new president to keep his promises

Record ID: 1688966

  • Title: Kenya's women leaders look to new president to keep his promises
  • Date: 14th September 2022
  • Summary: KIHIKA SIGNING CERTIFICATE AT INAUGURATION
  • Embargoed: 28th September 2022 10:45
  • Keywords: Kenyan elections Susan Kihika Women in politics politics
  • Location: NAKURU AND NAIROBI, KENYA
  • City: NAKURU AND NAIROBI, KENYA
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Africa,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA005494613092022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: President William Ruto is taking office at a time when Kenya has the largest number of elected female representatives in history.
    “We’ll look back, and we will say that this time was really historical. We may not be getting it now, but I think down the road we will look and say I mean, very many women were elected. It’s not very many when you think about it like I am not talking about 50 percent of women were elected. But so much more than we have seen before. One, I think as a country, we’ve become more conscious of the fact that even women can lead. I also believe that in those spaces women have been, they've been doing a good job. So, it has helped make the community or society a lot more also aware of their capabilities and competencies of the women as well," said lawyer Susan Kihika, who was elected as the first female governor of Kenya's populous Nakuru County during the August parliamentary, presidential and county polls.
    Now she and other women want a clause in the 2010 constitution enforced that says no more than two-thirds of any elected body be comprised of any one gender.
    Female candidates face abuse and physical assault, deterring many women from running. They need better protection on the campaign trail, said Kihika.
    Despite the dangers, August saw record numbers of Kenyan women elected. The number of female governors more than doubled while the number of female parliamentarians jumped by nearly a third.
    “When I first came to run, everyone was terrified, like the people around me, my friends, and my family, they are like it’s such a horrible thing to get into. The harassment, the insults, it’s just not very friendly. But over time I think as women we are getting harder like we are hardening up a bit. We are also realizing it doesn’t matter the field, many fields are hard anyway. So why not offer ourselves," said Kihika, one of seven female governors out of a total of 47 - about 15%.
    Female parliamentarians are a slightly larger proportion, at about 23%.
    “Nakuru, we are the third largest country in Kenya. And what just happened is one, like you said, I just got elected as the governor of that count, but in addition to that, we just elected a woman who is a senator, and we have now the women rep, who is obviously a woman so in that context, we have the whole county for the first time, the top leadership is women. It may not be that surprising to others listening, maybe for wherever they are in the world. But for our country, in some counties, the joke is, even for the seat reserved for women rep, like they elect zero women, and they even say, if it wasn’t clear that the seat reserved for women representatives is for women, they would vote in men, I hope you get how crazy that is," added Kihira.
    In 2020, the then-Chief Justice of the Kenyan Supreme Court advised parliament to be dissolved for failing to implement the gender rule following petitions from advocates including the Law Society of Kenya.
    Margaret Toili, a former candidate for parliament, was one of the petitioners. She has already drafted a new petition that she hopes to file, she told Reuters.
    "We are still not implementing the two-thirds law... they are facing the same consequences: dissolve parliament," Toili told Reuters.
    Political parties must also encourage more women to run, said Mercy Mwangi, coordinator of the Kenya Women Parliamentary Association.
    Mwangi said progress had been helped by a clause in the 2010 constitution that created 47 parliamentary seats reserved for women, out of a total of 350. Two of the seven female governors elected in this cycle were previously women's representatives, as were four parliamentarians.
    (Production: Nelson Aruya)
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