Women and Political Leadership in Kenya Ten Case Studies Nyokabi Kamau About the Heinrich Böll Foundati on The Heinrich Böll Stiftung/Foundation (HBF) is the Green Political Foundation, affi liated to the “Greens/Alliance ‘90’ political party represented in Germany’s federal parliament. Headquartered in Berlin and with offi ces in more than 25 different countries, HBF conducts and supports civic educational activities and projects world-wide. HBF understands itself as a green think-tank and international policy network, working with governmental and non-governmental actors and focusing on gender equity, sustainable development, and democracy and human rights. HBF’s Regional Offi ce for East and Horn of Africa has operated in Nairobi, Kenya, since 2001. The Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Programme supports efforts to enhance women’s political participation, curb violence against women, engender public policy making and facilitate dialogue initiatives on key agenda concerns. More information about HBF work on women’s political participation is available at: http://www.hbfha.com/ web/52-269.html Published 2010 by Heinrich Böll Foundation Regional Offi ce for East and Horn of Africa Forest Road P.O. Box 10799-00100, GPO, Nairobi, Kenya Tel: (254-20) 2680745 Email: [email protected] Website: www.boell.co.ke Heinrich Böll Stiftung Hackeshe Höfe Rosenthaler Strasse 40-41 D-10117 Berlin Tel: (49) 30 28534 - 0, Fax: (49) 30 28534 - 109 Email: [email protected], Web: www.boell.de ISBN 9966-7172-1-8 © Henrich Böll Stiftung 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotation in books and critical reviews. For information and permissions, write to Heinrich Böll Foundation. Opinions expressed are the responsibility of the individual authors and do not necessarily constitute the offi cial position of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Introduction Foreword After two and a half decades of gender activism, gender sensitization, capacity building, lobbying and mobilizing Kenya women to take up various political leadership positions, civic, gender and human rights awareness has remarkably improved, alongside strategies for policy and advocacy interventions. Policy makers have also mastered the gender language and can rhetorically articulate gender equality principles. Kenya, however, remains greatly challenged with regard to women’s ascendancy into public political leadership positions. Currently, the Kenyan parliament has only about 10 per cent women representation, trailing far behind the global average of 18.8 per cent women representation in parliaments. Some African countries have already attained the critical mass threshold of 33 per cent women’s representation in decision making. Over the past decade, all the countries in the East African region have overtaken Kenya on all measures of gender equality indices. In particular, Rwanda has rapidly recovered from genocide to become the leading country in the region and the world on its gender parity index, currently standing at 56 per cent women parliamentary representation. The dismal performance of Kenya in regard to women’s representation in political leadership, despite having pioneered and provided leadership to the post-1990 multi-party women empowerment programmes in the East African region, continues to raise concern both at the level of theory and praxis. Globally, the basic constraints women face as they attempt to participate in politics, though occurring in varying magnitudes in different countries, tend to be broadly similar. It has been argued that Kenya has some unique aspects that continue to keep the numbers of women in politics low, such as lack of an affi rmative action law, and the gender insensitive male political culture, which continues to dominate key social and political institutions. This issue requires further interrogation. This study acknowledges the challenges Kenya women face as they attempt to engage in political leadership. However, the study focuses less on the challenges women politicians face on the road to politics and more on the perceptions, experiences, visions, achievements and the lived experiences that have shaped their leadership perspectives and approaches. The study challenges us to think beyond numbers and to examine what women politicians actually do and aspire to do within and outside parliament. It seeks to confi rm, in the Kenyan case, the view held by many gender scholars that women do bring a different perspective from men when in leadership positions. The study uses the feminist approach and an empowering methodology that gives women leaders’ voice and which allows them to tell their own stories in their own words. This study is, therefore, innovative in that it begins to document, interrogate and analyse women’s perceptions and conceptualization of leadership and what “making a difference” means i Women and political leadership in Kenya: Ten case studies to them. What emerges from the fi ndings of this study is that some individual women politicians contribute more than is often acknowledged. The study also affi rms that the lack of a critical mass of women in parliament is a major constraint for women politicians to effect signifi cant and positive difference towards transforming the male-dominated culture of parliament, public policy, and infl uencing resource allocation in a gender equitable manner. Furthermore, the paucity of women in the Kenyan parliament may have contributed to the strategy of political survival that manifests itself in some women political leaders as a form of perceived “masculinization.” The study examines the experiences of 10 women. The study notes the diverse aspirations of women leaders and brings out the differences between those who, through political nomination, are in politics by accident and had not planned on joining politics and others that have a strong passion for political leadership but are hindered from entry to parliament by various socio-economic and political barriers. Most of the nominated women MPs interviewed for this study had no preparation or political experience. Indeed, one of them admitted to having no interest in politics, while another saw herself as a human rights activist and technocrat rather than a “platform politician.” The latter still performed quite well in parliament while the other was effective outside parliament, as a political motivator, mentor and empowering agent. This reminds us that women are not a homogenous group that share a common ideological perspective on all issues. Women leaders, like men, have to manage often contradictory socio-economic and political identities and loyalties to their families, religious beliefs, professions, ethnic communities, political parties and other allegiances. The challenge of managing and harmonizing these diversities in male-dominated political institutions has signifi cant implications on women’s performance in political leadership. The experiences and perspectives of the ten women politicians interviewed for this study provide an excellent foundation for future studies on Kenyan women in political leadership. In this connection, subsequent studies may need to record experiences and strategies of the few women political leaders who have been ministers and who have survived political challenges and managed to remain in parliament for at least a decade and are making a career out of politics. It may also be useful to revisit the issue of leadership with a view to analysing the performance of women in non-political institutions and as managers/bureaucrats in various public institutions. Such a study would be useful in sorting out and celebrating the various contributions women leaders make in public life, as excellent managers who may not necessarily be good political leaders and as community/grassroot leaders/mobilizers who may be uncomfortable with parliamentary political leadership. Finally, I wish to thank and congratulate the author of this volume, Dr Nyokabi Kamau and all who participated in various ways in this study for a job well done. Amb. Prof. Maria Nzomo Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies University of Nairobi ii Introduction Preface Global advances have been made towards the recognition of the principle of women’s political, economic and social equality. In Kenya, however, women continue to be marginalized in many areas of society, especially in the sphere of leadership and decision making. According to a 2009 survey by the Ministry of Gender, only 30.9 per cent of those employed in Kenya’s public service are women, 72 per cent of who are in the lower cadres. This same inequity exists in the judiciary, in the leadership of political parties, and in political representation: Women hold only about 10 per cent of the seats in the 10th Parliament. Ironically, Kenyan women have been at the forefront in championing the discourse and strategies that support women’s rights and gender equality–reinforced ostensibly by the hosting of the 3rd World Conference of Women in Nairobi in 1985. Sadly, this pioneer spirit has not only failed in achieving effective political participation or the taking up of leadership positions in Kenya itself, but women have also only served to nurture and observe the growth and success of women’s movements in neighbouring Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania who now lead global statistics on women’s representation in elective politics at 56.3, 31 and 30 per cent, respectively. In light of these contradictions, the Heinrich Böll