Kenyan women candidates who were subjected to verbal attacks, harassment and rape during the election campaigns made a historic breakthrough in the recent elections, winning 26 seats in parliament, a further step towards gender parity.
Last Tuesday, In Kenya, 22.1 million voters had to choose their new president, as well as 290 deputies, 47 senators, 47 county governors and 1,450 members of county assemblies. Of the 16,100 candidates, Kenyans elected 26 female MPs, up from 23 in 2017, seven female governors, up from three in 2017, and three female senators.
Women won in the politically influential counties of Kirinyaga and Machakos as well as Meru, where former women’s representative Kawira Mwangaza ran as an independent and beat her male competitors. In the Rift Valley town of Nakuru, women won eight positions, including a governor and a senator.
“Now sit back and see what women can do when they are in office,” said Tabitha Karanja, a businesswoman who runs Kenya’s second largest brewery (Keroche Breweries Ltd) and was recently elected as a senator.
Since the election of the first woman to Parliament in 1969, few female leaders held senior positions in Kenya, although almost half of the country’s registered voters were women. With the constitutional amendment in 2010, the “two-thirds rule” was introduced to ensure that more women come to leadership positions and to break male dominance in politics.
The political journey of Kenyan women fraught with difficulties
Although the number of women in the National Assembly rose by 20 percent in 2017, Kenya still lags far behind some of its neighbors, such as Rwanda, in terms of parity. Despite the success of women in the recent elections, the political journey of Kenyan women is often fraught with difficulties, and that of the 2022 candidates was no exception.
According to human rights organizations, verbal attacks, harassment and even rape: women have been victims of violence during the election campaign in Kenya.
The campaign “has been marred by violence against women” despite warnings and promises by the government to tackle the problem, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the NGO Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) said in a statement.
According to the Kenya Women Parliamentary Association, women candidates were subjected to dozens of verbal attacks, harassment and rape during election campaigns. They say that these tactics are deliberately used to prevent female politicians or female candidates from participating in politics.
Source: Africanews, AlJazeera, Reuters, France 24