I am old enough to remember the excitement, back in 1995, when Nyiva Mwendwa, was appointed as the first-ever female Cabinet minister in Kenya.
That was just over 30 years after independence, and it's odd to think that it took that long for a woman to be allowed to sit in at cabinet meetings as the equal of all the top leaders of the country of her time.
Mwendwa was to prove herself perfectly capable of holding her own in the highest government circles; and since that time, you do not hear any doubts cast on the likely effectiveness of any woman appointed to high office.
Indeed, right now, if you are to ask some of us how many women have been vetted by Parliament during the recent vetting for places in the cabinet, we would have no answer. It is no longer considered to be worthy of particular notice, how many women will be serving in the next cabinet. That glass ceiling has long been broken. We take it for granted that a good number of women will feature when a new cabinet is announced.
But with the current excitement in the US over the prospect of Kamala Harris proving to be more than a match for Donald Trump in the upcoming US presidential election, I am reminded that when it comes to elective (as opposed to appointive) office, Kenyan women still have very far to go.
The only woman in this country to have ever made a serious impact when she ran for president, was Charity Ngilu. Hers was a very inspiring campaign that at one point had the president of the time, Daniel Moi, visibly uneasy, if only because of her popularity in an electoral region he had hoped would overwhelmingly support him.
This was during the second multiparty elections in 1997.
She came fifth in that race, ending up with just under eight percent of the vote. But it was a credible outcome and established her as one of the Big Five of the day (the others being President Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga and Kijana Wamalwa).
There were 10 other presidential candidates in that race. And only one of these others got more than one percent of the total votes cast.
Some 27 years have passed since Ngilu’s remarkable run for the presidency, and in that time much progress has been made. More women have made their way into the higher echelons of public life, from the Judiciary to the civil service, and of course, the cabinet.
But are we really any closer to seeing a woman elected president here in Kenya?
Given that Dr William Ruto is guaranteed to run for reelection in 2027, who would you say are the leading politicians most likely to either defeat him, or at least offer serious competition?
Under different circumstances, one name that would come to mind would be Martha Karua, who was most recently the running mate of presidential candidate Raila Odinga.
Karua has been on the political frontlines for many years, and in her earlier years in politics was an unbeatable constituency politician, winning a straight four terms in parliament, and only losing when she turned her sights to higher things.
So the question recurs: 27 years after Charity Ngilu was one of the acknowledged “Big Five” of Kenyan politics, why is it that there is no woman who can currently be spoken of as an established political titan?
I am not sure why this is so.
What I can say at this point is that the example of Kamala Harris in the upcoming US presidential election, does not offer a realistic parallel for our Kenyan context.
The dynamics are completely different.
Former President Donald Trump is such a polarising figure in US politics; he is so irreconcilably despised by many Americans (both Democrats and Republicans); and his possible return to the White House would be such a profound humiliation to such Americans; that if Harris wins, it will be more of that there was a clear majority who hated Trump and turned up to vote against him, than that this majority particularly loved Harris.
