Women’s Participation in Constitution-Making Process in Kenya (S.3, Part 9)

Abstract

This 1hour 42minutes 29seconds – long video, was recorded in June 2017. Prof. Kabira’s interest in women’s struggles was aroused by research she conducted on women’s economic empowerment in Kiambu in 1983 in preparation for the Third World Conference on Women held in Nairobi in 1985. This research opened her eyes to the fact that many times people talk about women without understanding their issues from their own perspectives. This is because the research methods, for a long time, were not women-friendly and focused on men who spoke about women. Listening to women, she got a grounding in feminism which was perceived as a western concept. In 1984, she carried out research on women’s experiences during the MAU MAU uprising which gave her a mental commitment to documenting women’s experiences to learn what their experiences have been. Through research, she came to realize what has been happening to women and their lives, including their contribution to Kenya’s development. For example, women founded women groups such as Nyakinyua and built the independent church in Lari, Kiambu through their regular contributions of one shilling each. They were also able to buy land in the Rift Valley in Mai Mahiu, Naivasha. Owning a piece of land was one of the highest levels of empowerment as it gave them the freedom to walk out of abusive marriages and settle in their own land. Listening to women from different ethnic groups, in Kenya, taught her women’s perspectives on diverse issues as well as the individual and collective struggle for their rights. Kabira also worked with other women researchers, such as Prof. Gachukia, and listening to them also enhanced her appreciation of ordinary women’s struggles. After the Nairobi conference, Prof. Kabira, found herself immersed in the women’s movement. After some trainings in gender responsive development, Prof. Kabira became a member of a team of gender trainers in Kenya. The team founded the Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development (CCGD) whose focus was and continues to promote gender equality in Kenya through policy influence and implementation. She was appointed as a non-salaried Director and was instrumental in constructing a house for CCGD to ensure the sustainability of the organization with an office of their own. CCGD offered legal cover for the Caucus for Women’s Leadership (CWL) and later the Women’s Political Alliance – Kenya (WPA-K). These three organizations were very instrumental in pushing for women’s agenda during the Constitution-making process. Prof was involved in the Ufungamano initiative and was appointed to the Constitution Review Commission (CKRC). Kabira, together with other women commissioners, were instrumental in safeguarding women’s agenda in the constitution as well as lobbying key stakeholders, including members of parliament, to support women’s agenda in the constitution. Prof. Kabira notes that there was close networking and collaboration between the women parliamentarians and the women’s movement during the constitution-making process than the one that exists between women members of parliament and women today. This deprives women parliamentarians of the support of the power of numbers of women, the intellectual capacity and the lobbying and advocacy to support them when trying to bring a constitutional amendment bill for the two-thirds gender rule in the national assembly. In addition, under the new constitution, donor agencies found a way to work with government institutions in the spaces that the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) were fighting for and so rather than supporting CSOs in their work they started engaging directly with the government. This has denied CSOs vital resources and has greatly weakened their operations because they were being predominantly dependent on donor funding. Women also became somehow fatigued given the amount of physical, emotional, and spiritual energy they had spent by the time the constitution-making process was concluded with the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Prof. Kabira concludes that women’s struggle is not yet over. They should, therefore, not get tired. She hopes that a small technical group of women can come together and develop a women’s gender for the realization of the two-thirds gender rule in parliament. The women should be mobilized to lobby and advocate for this agenda and it is doable. She notes that women’s struggle should not be an end to itself but should go beyond getting women to parliament to building better societies where all citizens, women, men, boys and girls, enjoy their basic rights including the right to food so that nobody dies of hunger in a land with plenty of resources. As a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Prof. Kabira was involved in the struggle for women’s house allowance which married women were being denied. Today, every woman employed at the University of Nairobi enjoys this right.