Contrary to the male-dominated politics of the past, many women in the modern democracies around the world currently occupy the roles of prime ministers, supreme court justices, governors, senators, speakers of parliament, army generals, among other important governmental positions.
Currently, there are female presidents in Taiwan, Greece, Barbados, Slovakia, Singapore, Nepal, Moldova, Iceland, Honduras and Georgia.
Africa too has not been left behind. In 2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was in exile in Kenya in the 1980s, became the first African woman to be elected president.
Currently, Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu and Ethiopia’s Sahle-Work Zewde (she was the director general of the United Nations Office at Nairobi from 2011 to 2018) are the first female presidents of their respective countries.
Kenya has had phenomenal female icons like the first African woman Nobel peace prize winner Prof Wangari Maathai, Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o, Ambassador Amina Mohammed, author Margaret Ogola and paleontologist Louise Leakey, among other formidable women members of Parliament, governors, senators, speakers and Cabinet secretaries.
Despite these achievements, since Kenya got its independence the country has had 11 vice presidents, all of whom have been men.
East Africa Community member countries that share a border with Kenya – Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan – have had female vice presidents. Uganda has had two: Specioza Kazibwe, who was vice president for eight years from 1994 to 2003, and the current Vice President, Jessica Alupo.
Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu is the country's first woman vice president and now its first female president. South Sudan, whose founding Kenya brokered, currently has a female deputy president, Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior.
Kenya too should follow in this vein, and have a female deputy president, like these countries and like the United States, which for the first time in its history has a sitting female Vice President, Kamala Harris.
As far as giving access to the presidency and deputy presidency is concerned, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are the only EAC members left behind.
Burundi, another EAC member, has also had two female vice presidents: Alice Nzomukunda and Marina Barampama. Even Rwanda, in 1993, had a female prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana (who was acting president for 14 hours before her assassination in 1994).
Of 54 African countries, only five currently have female vice presidents: Liberia (Jewel Taylor), The Gambia (Isatou Touray), Benin (Mariam Chabi Talata), Zambia (Mutale Nalumango) and South Sudan.
Kenya has a very good reputation as one of the very few African countries providing access to important political seats to women. While the Constitution guarantees female participation in government, mainly through the two-thirds gender rule and the introduction of the woman representative position, still deserving women leaders remain locked from the presidency and deputy presidency.
Both viable coalitions for the 2022 State House race, Kenya Kwanza and Azimio la Umoja, have amazing women leaders to choose from. On one hand Azimio has Martha Karua and Charity Ngilu, among others. On the other hand Kenya Kwanza has Anne Waiguru and Alice Wahome, among others.
With Azimio’s women's league having endorsed Karua and the push for Waiguru to deputise Ruto, and with the political impetus pushing the two viable presidential candidates to pick their deputies from Central Kenya, a Martha Karua and Anne Waiguru candidature for the deputy presidency is all the more imminent.
Kenya is on the right track as far as inclusivity of women in key governmental positions is concerned. We already have the first-ever woman president of the Supreme Court, Martha Koome, and woman deputy president of the Supreme Court, Philomena Mwilu.
It is high time Kenya had its first female deputy president.
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