RIGHTS-KENYA: Ensuring that “X” Marks the Gender-Friendly Spot

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Sep 2 2005 (IPS) - On the face of it, women in Kenya have a powerful tool at their disposal for dealing with politicians who fumble over the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an international set of objectives that tackle gender inequality, amongst other issues.

If they vote in sufficient numbers, these women could send the laggards packing. According to the Electoral Commission of Kenya, about 50 percent of people who cast votes during the last general election – in 2002 – were women.

“We can, if only we sensitise all women that they have a right to demand explanations from their leaders on why certain promises have not been fulfilled,” Monica Amolo, executive director of the Programme for Rehabilitation of Women in Socio-Economic Difficulty (PROWED), told IPS.

“We are tired of empty promises, and what women want now is action. This calls for intensified efforts in the area of civic education,” she added. PROWED works with communities in western Kenya.

Even with the best will in the world, however, can PROWED and other groups like it provide Kenyan women with all the information they need to make informed decisions at the ballot box? And if not, would women be able to get this information elsewhere?

The print media might seem a good source for coverage of what the MDGs are, and analysis of whether politicians have a respectable track record concerning their implementation. But, illiteracy would prevent millions of women from benefiting from this information.

According to the latest available figures (for 1999) from the Adult Education Department of the Ministry of Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services, five million of Kenya’s estimated 30 million citizens are illiterate. Of these, 60 percent are women.

It could be argued that the country’s broadcast media should step into the breach here, as radio and television programmes on development issues skirt problems of literacy. Community radio stations, which have their finger on the pulse of local developments, seem a promising way of getting information across – especially those which broadcast in local languages.

Yet, government concerns about the possible effects of a lively network of community stations appear set to undermine the role such broadcasters might play in informing women about the MDGs.

“When you give information on sensitive matters such as governance and then allow communities to air views on the same, you are democratising information to the anger of the government,” Grace Githaiga, coordinator of the Kenya Community Media Network (KCOMNET), told IPS. “The government fears being challenged by an informed audience.” (KCOMNET, which links journalists, media organisations and non-governmental groups, is based in the Kenyan capital – Nairobi.)

It is perhaps telling that Kenya has only one community radio station at present: Mang’elete Community Radio, located in the east of the country. It was licensed last year after a decade of intense lobbying by media activists.

Even if women manage to become informed about whether their leaders are fulfilling promises made about development, their votes may still go to undeserving politicians, warns Amolo.

“Most of the women in the rural areas vote for anyone who gives them handouts like sugar, flour and money, given the high poverty level,” she says. It seems that information about development issues will have to go hand-in-hand with poverty relief initiatives if hunger and need are not to drown out efforts at holding politicians accountable.

“This can succeed only if we embark on socio-economic programmes to empower women, especially the rural woman,” notes Amolo.

“There is a need to collect data on how many rural women have some source of livelihood, then find out how those lacking income can be helped to sustain themselves,” she adds. “It then becomes easy to talk to someone who is capable of helping themselves, out of voting for non-performers.”

Government statistics indicate that about 56 percent of Kenyans live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

In addition, ethnicity may undo the work of activists, community stations and the like.

“People do not vote from an informed point of view. There are issues of culture that power belongs to the man; ethnicity also plays a part in that one can only vote for someone from his ethnic group among others,” Winnie Mitullah, a senior research fellow from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, told IPS.

Kenya has several dozen ethnic groups of which the Kikuyu is the largest, accounting for about a fifth of the population.

Eight MDGs were agreed on by world leaders during the Millennium Summit, held at the United Nations in New York in 2000. The deadline for the goals is 2015.

The MDGs focus on halving extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality (to be measured by whether boys and girls receive an equal education at primary and secondary school).

The goals also deal with reducing child and maternal mortality, combating AIDS and other major diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability – and addressing development issues such as trade imbalances and high levels of national debt.

Later this month (Sep. 14 to 16), another summit will take place at U.N. headquarters to assess progress towards achieving the MDGs.

The hope is that discussions at this meeting will provide added impetus to the MDG campaign, ultimately putting women in Kenya – and the rest of the continent – in a position where they can, as rights activist Yassine Fall says, “use their votes intelligently.”

Fall made the comment in May at a conference organised by a Dakar-based non-governmental organisation, the African Women’s Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights, of which she is president. This meeting dealt with MDG implementation.

“They must demand to know from their leaders when treaties or laws signed in their favour will be implemented, before voting,” Fall told IPS. “It should be something like ‘Tell me what you are going to do for me and when, if I am to give you my vote’.”