By Charles Mwirigi
Despite commanding a numerical majority, as confirmed by the just-released 2019 census results by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics(KNBS), Kenyan females’ still hold minority influence socio-economically.
In an ideal situation, with the clear majority in numbers, making up 50.5 percent of the population, according to latest figures from the census, the women of Kenya would be having huge socio-economic influence. Still, this has remained a pipe dream, massive efforts invested in this endeavour notwithstanding.
Taking the agriculture sector, for instance, points towards a grim situation of inequality for the women. According to the KNBS, women provide 80 percent of the farm labour and manage 40 percent of the smallholder farms in Kenya, yet they only own roughly one (1) percent of agricultural land and receive just 10 percent of available credit.
This is because of the magnitude of challenges that women have had strewn on their path to socio-economic empowerment from time immemorial.
The greatest economic challenge has been their limited access to credit from financial institutions to start and scale up a thriving business and create wealth. This is mostly due to lack of collateral limiting their access to credit. Then there is limited access to entrepreneurship training to enhance their chances of success.
Even for political leadership, which is a game of numbers, increasing the proportion of female representation has remained a challenge despite deliberate efforts to boost the same by creating special women representative seats in Parliament.
Over time, some gains have been made and the status of Kenyan women has been on the improving trend. There are more women in a different field in the workplace, in positions of leadership as well as running successful enterprises.
There are more Kenyan women leading listed firms than the global average, according to the recently released Gender Equality in the Workplace Report, though at a dismal 12 percent (compared to the global 5.8 percent average).
Still, in as much a lot has been achieved already, more still needs to be done in further empowering women in the country…
