Kenyan women achieved a historic breakthrough in the August 9 elections, notably winning 26 seats for women MPs, a further step towards parity.
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The campaign had already been atypical with a record number of candidates, including three appearing as running mates of the four presidential contenders.
Last Tuesday, 22.1 million voters had to choose their new president, as well as 290 deputies, 47 senators, 47 county governors and 1,450 members of county assemblies.
Among the 16,100 candidates, Kenyans elected 26 women MPs, compared to 23 in 2017, seven governors, compared to three in 2017, and three senators.
Women won in the politically influential counties of Kirinyaga and Machakos as well as Meru, where former women’s representative Kawira Mwangaza ran as an independent and beat her male competitors.
In the town of Nakuru, in the Rift Valley, women have won eight posts, including governor and senator.
“Now sit down and watch what women can do when they are in office,” said Tabitha Karanja, businesswoman at the head of Kenya’s second largest brewery (Keroche Breweries Ltd) and newly elected senator. under the label of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) of William Ruto.
Since the election of the first woman to Parliament in 1969, the political landscape in Kenya has remained predominantly male and the application of parity patchy.
The 2010 Constitution requires a two-thirds/one-third balance between men and women in Parliament. But the two chambers, dominated by men, have never passed a law to this effect, despite legal challenges to force their hand.
The number of women elected had already increased in 2017, reaching around 20% of the National Assembly. However, Kenya remains far from some of its neighbours, such as Rwanda, in terms of parity.
The political journey of Kenyan women is often strewn with pitfalls and that of the candidates of 2022 was no exception.
The campaign ‘has been marred by violence targeting women’ despite government warnings and promises to tackle the problem, according to the International Federation for Human Rights and the NGO Kenya Human Rights Commission .
However, “the emergence of more female candidates confirms that these primitive tactics no longer work as well as they once did,” noted Kenya’s influential Daily Nation newspaper in its Aug. 5 editorial.