Affirmative Action as a Strategy for Increased Women's Political Leadership: a Case of the National Assembly of Kenya's 11th Parliament, 2013-2017

Abstract

Affirmative Action is entrenched in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and was first implemented in the 11th Parliament. Despite its entrenchment in the Constitution, it continues to face resistance and its full implementation has so far not been realized. The main aim of this study was to investigate Affirmative Action as a strategy for increasing women's political leadership using the case study of the National Assembly of Kenya's 11th parliament. The objectives of this study were: to locate the struggle for Affirmative Action within Kenya's social political and historical context, to analyze women's legislators' contributions in the National Assembly of the 11th Parliament and to examine the challenges the women legislators face in fulfilling their mandate. This study is descriptive and grounded in feminist research methodology. It employed qualitative and quantitative research methods. The study established that Affirmative Action has to a large extent been successful in the National Assembly despite the challenges women legislators face. The study also identified some of the challenges as entrenched male dominance; resistance due to entrenched patriarchal ideological orientation and continuation of colonial thinking, traditions and practices. As such, the study established that there is a relationship between Affirmative Action and women's political leadership. The threshold for the attainment of the "not more than two thirds" gender rule for increasing the numbers of women in the National Assembly has not been met and therefore remains work in progress. The constitutional gender provisions are only a starting point and more effort and political will is needed to ensure that the spirit and intent of the Affirmative Action is realized in the day-to-day lives of the Kenyan women.