Examining Strategies that Women’s Movement Used to Realize Gains in the Kenya Constitution 2010

Abstract

Women have been excluded from decision-making institutions and processes. To eliminate gender discrimination in laws, secure equal rights for women and enact legislations that promote gender equality, women have since the 1960s strived for political, economic, and cultural emancipation, with more returns being realized in the formulation and enactment of the Constitution of Kenya (2010), where progressive provisions for women’s empowerment were enshrined in the supreme law. This study aimed at examining strategies women and women’s movements used during the constitutional review process in Kenya between 1997 and 2010 to strengthen women’s self-mobilization for Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), as well as to identify best practices for women’s self-mobilization.

The objectives of the study were to: identify the strategies women’s movements used during the constitutional review process in Kenya, document emerging best practices for women’s self-mobilization from the strategies identified, explore the strategies used by women in selfmobilization for WEE, and identify policies and legislation gaps for advocacy for WEE.

The research applied feminist and grounded theory approaches. The secondary and primary data were collected using qualitative methods. The research was carried out in three regions, that is, Nairobi, Coast and Nyanza with respondents chosen purposively to participate in the study. The Nyanza (conducted in Kisumu) interviews drew the respondents from Kasipul Kabondo, Homabay, Mbita, Migori, Busia, Mount Elgon, Kisumu, Kakamega, Mbale, Siaya, Bungoma, while the coast region (interviews conducted in Mombasa) was represented by respondents from, Kilifi, Malindi, Kwale, Lamu, and Taita Taveta.

The Nairobi interviews drew participants from all over the country. This is because they had active grassroots women groups and other women’s movements that participated in the constitution-making process. A desk review targeting existing global, regional, and national literature and databases on women’s self-mobilization towards economic empowerment and political participation with a special focus on women’s self-mobilization in the review of the Kenyan constitution was conducted. Primary qualitative data were collected through in-depth interviews of autobiographical narratives with selected women who participated in the Kenya constitution-making process (pathfinders); semi-structured questionnaires with women purposively drawn from women’s organizations and civil society organizations (CSOs) such as GROOTS, WPA, FIDA, CRAWN TRUST/NWSC, Women Political Caucus, Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development (CCGD), League of Women Voters, Education Centre for Women in Development (ECWD) among others; and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with select women, who were involved in the making of the constitution 2010. The primary qualitative data were analyzed using NVIVO whereby dominant themes were transformed into codes with guidance from the research tools. The data were categorized according to the thematic areas before patterns were drawn for analysis.

Major findings from the study established that women and women’s movements used various strategies during the constitutional review process such as uniting for a common constitutional agenda; engaging different stakeholders including government officials; advocacy; collaborations between women leaders, educating women about the constitution through the women groupings as well as through the media; mobilization; a collection of views, and having male allies to agitate for women issues to be adopted in the constitution. Emerging best practices for self-mobilization include the use of women groupings for economic emancipation, lobbying, advocacy, and pushing for the implementation of policies in parliament that support women’s self-mobilization initiatives. The study found policy and legislation gaps for WEE including a lack of goodwill from the politicians, individualistic competition, lack of accountability and dissemination channels, poverty, ethnic divisions, and jeopardy from the courts.

The study recommends the provision of statistics to back up the gaps in channelling the discourse of policy change for WEE, consultations with policy experts in developing policies for WEE, revitalizing the women’s movements to ensure full implementation of the constitutional gains, setting timelines for achieving the constitutional gains, provision of more women economic empowerment programs by the government to women, especially in the rural areas, provision of continuous checks and balances to ensure accountability of the women leaders in office, involvement of women in decision-making, especially in matters pertaining to women and holding of intergenerational fora to ensure passage of knowledge to the young women leaders.