African Woman and Child Feature Service

Today presents a good opportunity for assessing the status of women in Kenya.  However, in the opinion of Hon. Esther Murugi Mathenge, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social, women still have ground to cover and their work is far from over.

“In some areas we are doing well, but we still have a long way to go to achieve equality, peace and development between the women and men of Kenya,” says the minister. “Working in the Ministry of Gender means that I am entirely responsible for Kenya’s 34 million plus population in all its diversity, with all its possibilities and challenges.”

There are still many challenges and obstacles facing aspiring women leaders today all around the world and Kenya is no exception. Women do two-thirds of the world’s work but receive only 10 percent of the world’s income and own less than one percent of land. In most cases they are the primary care givers, balancing the complex challenges of work and family. Globally there is still a gender pay gap, a shortage of women parliamentarians.  Women's health overall around the world is in a worse state than men.

Ms Murugi wants to see a different face of Kenya – where people are united as women and men regardless of political affiliation or tribe. This is her passion.

“I want to see Kenyan women move from a state of poverty to a state of prosperity,” says the minister, “I want to see more women taking up positions of leadership in Parliament and local authorities.”

For Esther Murugi, IWD is an opportunity to challenge stereotypes about women and address the issues that hold them back from achieving their full potential.  She is keen to see Kenya on the global map – surpassing Rwanda’s remarkable record of 50 percent gender parity in Parliament and leadership positions.

She says, “We’ll need a bloodless revolution to overcome some of the barriers that are before us because we have been talking endlessly and little has changed.”

She sees her ministry as the vehicle for rallying women and men together to articulate issues of concern together - but this means going beyond the tribal and political boundaries that restrict dialogue and joint actions to end the oppression of women in Kenya.

“If all the women of Kenya were to start screaming at an appointed time simultaneously, you can be sure that someone would sit up and listen.”

At face value, one could argue that women have gained true equality because there are more women in the boardrooms, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

This year’s theme “equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care giving in the context of HIV/AIDS” with the following sub-theme “women and men united to end violence against women and girls” embraces the realities of life as experienced by women and men in Kenya and at the global level and puts into context the issues surrounding the largely unpaid and unrecognised care economy.   

A recent report by the UN Research Institute for Social Development covering Argentina, India, Nicaragua, Reublic of Korea, South Africa and Tanzania found that women spend twice as much time on unpaid care work as men.  Women and girls provide up to 90 percent of the care related to HIV and AIDS.

Ms Murugi knows all to well the frustration of making policy meaningful as she grapples with the challenges of heading a service-oriented ministry amid funding constraints. She cites the 2008 budget to fund a social protection strategy that was meant to take care of the poorest of the poor that was greatly scaled down from one billion shillings to a paltry four million shillings.

“This is just one example and it is a drop in the ocean compared to the work that is before us if we are to leverage the gender and development issues of Kenyans,” she adds.

Social protection comprises a range of protective public actions carried out by the state and others in response to vulnerability and poverty.  It seeks to guarantee relief from destitution for sections of the population who for reasons beyond their control are unable to provide for themselves.  Women, children, persons with disability and persons living with HIV/AIDS form the bulk of Kenya’s poorest of the poor.

The gender ministry is considered more of a service provider as opposed to being a revenue generator considering that the dockets that fall in its ambit revolve around social and welfare issues hence the heavy reliance on donor funding and civil society partnerships.

The Ministry oversees policies on gender, children and social development; gender mainstreaming into national development; the Women’s Enterprise Fund; promotion and coordination of volunteer services and well as social welfare for vulnerable groups and community development as well as programmes and institutions for children’s care and development.