UNTIL the 2013 general election, the Maasai community no elected female MP.
Peris Pesi Tobiko was voted Kajiado East MP despite
being “cursed” at one time by Maasai elders after she beat seven TNA aspirants in primaries.
The elders said it was against tradition for women to eye leadership positions and threatened to curse anyone who supported her bid, a local daily reported.
She had earlier decamped from ODM, after party officials told her that a woman candidate would not sell in Maasailand. She banked on the cosmopolitan Kitengela and Isinya towns and some Maasai youths who had decided to ignore the elders’ threat.
It is in response to these manifest barriers to Kenyan women participating in elective politics that the 2010 Constitution introduced the two-third gender rule.
Article 81(b) of the constitution states, “Not more than two-thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender.”
However, despite frequent lobbying in and outside Parliament, the gender equality Bill has yet to find its way to full implementation.
On the second attempt, the Senate - like the National Assembly - failed on Wednesday to vote and pass the Bill for lack of quorum. In a Senate of 67 members, only 22 men and six women were present.
However, I feel the issue of increasing and encouraging women's participation in leadership is more than a legislative matter. We need to ask ourselves first, why do women need this Affirmative Action?
Mostly, it is because of social and culture beliefs or perceptions that women are not good leaders. That is what we should focus on and change.
Women in the past 50-plus years of Independence, such as former Maendeleo Ya Wanawake chairpersons Phoebe Asiyo and Zipporah Kittony and Jane Kiano, academicians such as the late Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai, Dr Eddah Gachukia, Dr Maria Nzomo and Prof Wanjiku Kabiru and politicians Grace Onyango, Dr Julia Ojiambo, the late Grace Ogot, Martha Karua and Charity Ngilu certainly show women can make it to national and international leadership. They made it to the national and international limelight without any such legislation. They graduated through the structures and ranks. They were/are vocal and strong women, unlike the recently nominated women MPs or those elected as Woman Representatives.
Just as the people of Kajiado East, the electorate is ready and willing to vote for women. We already have some, although only a few, elected. It has been proven by none other than the aforementioned women leaders and others, including Betty Tett and Margaret Wanjiru of Nairobi, Wavinya Ndeti and Jessica Mbalu of Lower Eastern, Millie Mabona of Nyanza, Joyce Laboso, Jebii Kilimo and Hellen Sambili of Rift Valley and Esther Murugi and Mary Wambui of Central Kenya. For those who have reservations, like the Maasai elders in Tobiko's case, we have to enlighten them, or prove them wrong like the Maasai youths did.