SYLVAN CHEMUTAI LSS201-C002-0153/2020

NICOLE WANGARE LSS201-C002-0133/2020

BER AKELLO LSG201-C002-0025/2020YL

DIANA WANGAMATI LSS201-C002-0144/2020

Discuss how Gender is discriminated in development and how this has impacted on Kenya’s
development. Suggest solutions

‘Statistics alone cannot make policy. Some rich countries have no poor people but have high levels of
inequality while some poor countries have low levels of inequality.’ -Dr Edward Sambili

Gender inequality exists in Kenya because women are victimized by them not being given equal
opportunities as their male counterparts. This hinders their efforts to give their best outputs in sectors
like education and work thus slowing down the development process Kenya.

In a patriarchal society, like Kenya, women are seen to be of less importance compaired to the men.
They can not access privileges which men are accorded freely. These privileges promote Male
supremacy and female victimization thus the existence of gender inequality.

In the education system in Kenya, gender inequality exist in that, there is a difference in the cut-off
marks for men and women. The cut-off mark for women is less than that of men. This suggests that
women can not perform as well as the men thus they need some sort of head start to be at par with the
men. This promotes gender inequalities in Kenya and should be done away with.

When it comes to policy issue in Kenya, the constitution plays a role in promoting gender inequality.
The current constitution allows for discretionary powers to be exercised in the area of immigration. The
effect of this is that it limits women‘s rights to get passports and other documents without recourse to
males (spouses and fathers). How come the woman should ask for permission before acquiring a
passport or other documents? Is this fair? The constitution also promotes gender inequality when it
mentions about citizenship. If a woman loses her Kenyan citizenship upon marriage to a foreigner, what
is her status should he abandon her? Does she become a stateless person or can she re-adopt her
Kenyan citizenship? Sure she may retain her Kenyan citizenship- but she cannot pass it on to her
husband or to her children who may only acquire their father‘s citizenship. A Kenyan woman married to
a foreigner does not pass on her citizenship to her husband, though this applies if a Kenyan man marries
a foreign woman. The fact that a Kenya woman cannot pass her citizenship to her children or spouse
shows that there exist gender inequalities in Kenya. Gender inequality through the Kenyan constitution
continues to be prevalent when it mentions that, the legal guardian of a child is the father and the
mother only becomes such guardian once the father of the child dies. The Kenya woman is denied right
of being a legal guardian to her child while the man is granted that privileged. It is also interesting to
note that a father can get the name of his children included on his passport without the mother‘s
consent while the mother has to get the father‘s consent.
 The existent of the patriarchal system, the discriminatory practices in the education system and the
current constitution all show that gender inequalities do exist in Kenya and women are victimized and
not given the same opportunities as the men.

Gender inequality has slowed down development in Kenya, if women were given equal opportunities as
that of men not made to be victims, the country would be at a better position in terms of development.
Equity is very important for any society to move forward and achieve some sort of development. Several
steps need to be taken for equity to be achieved and thus the sooner Kenya start to take those steps the
faster development will stop being a dream but a reality

Besides, Doyal (2009) explains that women have felt discriminated against and marginalized from most
economic and developments over the years. There have been calls for policies that would empower
them and eliminate this marginalization. As much as some changes have been made that have helped
improve their lives, their position in the society has not changed much. Besides, there still are
inequalities in health and other services that deter women from achieving their goals. This goes
especially for the women in Kenya where the term gender sensitivity has not yet found a meaning
(Cornwall, 2007). To assess the problems faced by women as a result of gender inequalities in health
services in developing countries, we need to first of all have a picture of the overall health services
situation in Kenya and other developing countries.

To Gwatkin (2001) Land is a fundamental asset for the economic empowerment of the poor. Women‘s
land rights should be treated as fundamental human right. Women have been systematically removed
from owning land. This increases the levels of poverty for the women in the country. Thus the women
can not compete fairly with the men because they are not at par. They can not fully participating in the
decision making processes despite their active participation in the production process alongside men
and efforts must be made to ensure that attempts at gender parity do not remain at policy level but at
the grassroots especially because there is an increase in women‘s vulnerability to poverty in Kenya.
Appropriate legal measures should be taken to ensure that men and women have equal rights in land
before marriage (in cases of inheritance) during marriage and during its dissolution. This would ensure
security of tenure for women and as a result lead to increased investment in land and decrease poverty
thus leading to a step closer towards equity in Kenya.

There are other scholars such as Chant (2006) who argues that lack of economic resources makes it hard
for women to seek proper health care and medical attention when they fall sick. The many heavy and
exhausting household chores performed by women also have some negative impact on their health.

Health and Education sector

Despite the fact that Kenya has embraced campaign against gender disparity, the girl child still lacks
equal education opportunities as the boy child and in most cases though enrolled the girl child is forced
out of school because of customary laws (Fennell & Arnot 2007). According to the report compiled by
UN Millennium Project (2005) boys who seek primary education and managed to complete this basic
education are approximately two third more than the girls. Curran et al. (2006), explains that the
increased rate of poverty in Kenyan communities has resulted to the male being given prevalence to
education because of limited resources. Girls in Kenya still do not have the same enrollment in schools
as boys. 22% of women have no education at all compared to 14% of men. Education of girls is
considered the most efficient tool to create development. When women are educated their
independence and job opportunities are enhanced and they can contribute financially to their own
households as well as to the development of their countries. When women are empowered with
education and their health care is improved,

There will be better role of women in child care as child mortality rates will decrease. This is because
women will achieve independence in accessing productive resources such as employment and economic
stability. Some women in Kenya dies from pregnancy related complications because of their illiteracy
level which prevents them from accessing prenatal child birth and postnatal health care (White 2005).
Provision of safe motherhood care to the women is highly ignored as most of these roles are delegated
to mid wives who do not take into account safe measures to observe during child birth as can be noted
in the World Bank & Gender and Development Group (2003).

In most developed countries including Kenya, women do not enjoy their reproductive and health care
rights as do women in the developed world (United Nations 2004). According to Jacobson (2000), the
reproductive health matters of women in Kenya have still not attained the required standards because
of not educating the girl child. This explains the increased population growth in Kenya as most of the
women cannot access contraceptives because of government legislations, cultural practices and
traditional labour laws (United Nations 2004). Therefore, empowering women with education will
increase their literacy level on a number of things including, the appropriate use of contraceptives to
control the number of child birth they experience.

Women and girls have been an instrument to the impact of the world’s largest epidemic; AIDS especially
in the Sub-Saharan African countries (Case 2001). This has been attributed to gender inequality in
regards to provision of nutritious food and education. World Bank (2003), statistics show that poor
women who feed on low nutritional foods are the most affected by communicable, sexually transmitted,
malaria and tuberculosis among other diseases. Health care treatment accorded to women is of lower
standards than that accorded to the male as the health of the male is highly regarded because they are
viewed as the stamina of the economy of Kenya. The study conducted by Curran et al. (2006), clearly
depicts the challenges that girls face in relation to vulnerability in contracting HIV/AIDS and other
disease as they are more exposed. The study shows the girls as the care takers of AIDS victims and
children left at home by their parents as they receive medical care in hospitals. This prevents them from
attending school, in the end affecting Kenya‘s human capital (Curran et al. 2006).

HIV/AIDS positive are more stigmatized by the society and family members than men. They are even
locked out of the community increasing their death rates due to lack of proper health care, nutritious
food and psychological stress. Therefore, by educating women their status will improve as they will be
less vulnerable and thus combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, communicable diseases and malaria among
other epidemics that women face. (Buck 2005)

Economic and work place

Today, the key drivers of Kenya‘s economy are services (65.1 per cent), industry (18.8 per cent) and
agriculture (16.3 per cent), but the majority of Kenyans‘ participation in these economic sectors is
marginal –often restricted to employment alone. Unemployment, according to 2001 figures, is at 47 per
cent, and most of the affected are youth and women. The participation of women and youth in the
economy, In Kenya women in the labour market mostly occupy low-grade positions.

Kenya‘s population is 52 per cent female; yet the elected MPs who are women in parliamentary account
for 4%. That means 9 women but 201 men. This is very low compared to some neighboring countries
like Rwanda. The same goes for other public offices. Among Kenyan elected councilors only 5% are
women and among district commissioners less than 1 %. Only 13% of professionals in public service
were women in 2002. Unemployment among young women in the cities is 275,000 compared to

75,000 young men (United Nations 2004). Women should be given the same opportunities as men to
obtain bank loans, start companies, run them, and to earn their own living. Women are reliable credit
takers and schemes to help women enter into business are often successful. Efforts should be made to
reduce the unpaid work done by women, for example fetching water, thus make women more
independent. It gives them time to go to school or to take a paid job and help in the development
process. Also, many small businesses in Kenya are run by women. These businesses can grow through
fair trade and an increase in trade with the outside world which is important for economic growth in
Kenya

Culture and Religion

The cultures in Kenya play a part in bringing about lack of equity in the society. There is thus need for
this culture to be reoriented so as to achieve equity especially retrogressive cultural traditional believes
and practices. Girls are reluctant to attend schools because of the traditional and cultural teachings
embedded into them which defines household as the woman‘s place, Curran et al. (2006). He further
explains that these practices are also used to the advantage of Kenyan families as they use girls to earn
them money. Furthermore he perceives early marriages and sexual abuse to the girls as a common norm
in the Kenyan setting especially in the Massai community. This, abuses the rights of the girls from
attaining education because of unwanted pregnancies and psychological constraints.

In some cultures, a woman can not inherit land, why is this so? Why is it that the man is the ones who
are given access to inheritance and yet the woman is denied such an opportunity? When women have
the same rights as men to own and inherit land, property and other assets, their independence is
enhanced. This in turn contributes to the development of society. In Kenya, Women own only 5% of the
land. The possibilities for women to get legal help to secure their rights must be increased.

In the Kalenjin cultures in Kenya, a woman can not articulate her concerns directly to men. She has to
talk through the elders for her to be heard, yet the man does not have to do so. This type of gender
inequality is what is contributing to the slow development process in Kenya.

In religion, the books were written by men and thus they articulate a male‘s perspective on things. They
refer to God as he, why not she? This has thus brought about the lack of equity in our society today.
These books should be reinterpreted for equity to be realized and development to be achieved

Differences of culture or religion cannot be used as a justification for denying equal rights to women
anywhere in the world. In a high profile speech given at Chatham
House in London, Ms Booth, a human rights lawyer the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair,
denounced the unequal treatment of women on religious grounds in some societies as a “distortion” of
the true message of faiths. She said that in many areas proclaimed adherence to a specific religion or
system of belief or culture is intimately tied to women’s continuing discrimination and abuse.

Women’s rights are a universal ethic that cuts across all cultures and all religions and imperative for our
shared humanity. Therefore some traditional practices under which a woman cannot divorce without
her husband’s consent does not make sense. What is striking is that there remain those who try to
justify or excuse such discrimination that women face from religious and cultural practices. Kenyans
simply can’t go along with this view if they want to achieve development.

Conclusion

From the above facts, gender inequality in the heath and educating sector, culture and religion,
economic and work place are at a high level in Kenya‘s. These sectors do not offer the same
opportunities to women and men. They tend to favour the man by giving them first priority and ignore
the women all together. By doing so, Kenya fails to utilize all it human capital and if this continues, this
country will suffer greatly.

Men and women in Kenya should be given the same opportunity for development to be achieved at a
higher rate. This is because as discussed in this chapter, gender inequalities do affect Kenya‘s
development. Women should therefore be integrated and included in the decision making process
because they are human capital that Kenya should utilize in order for it to achieve its full potential in
terms of development.

There is increasing recognition of the significant role women play in the socioeconomic and political
development of the Kenya‘s society. However, the full participation of women in development continues
to be hampered by a number of obstacles. These challenges essentially put them at a disadvantaged
position (relative to men) in so far as realizing their full potential and freedoms is concerned. Therefore
to fully achieve gender equity and development, more investment should be directed towards
promoting more girls to be educated and include more girls in the work place by eradicate practices, and
laws that perpetuate gender inequality.

To achieve equity in Kenya, the strategies of resocialization can not work. This is because resocialization
does not prosper with large populations. It can only work in small societies or groups. Therefore, Kenya
can not use resocialization to achieve equity.

While it is not easy to achieve gender equity, there are some steps that can be taken to move towards
achieving it. The first step can be through the use of cultural reorientation.We should mind our language
if we are to achieve equity. Gender justice in language, may be achieved through the development of a
gender-related approach to linguistic human rights. While in western society‘s gender discrimination
through language, or linguistic sexism, was an issue of concern for over 3 decades, in developing
countries like Kenya, efforts to promote gender justice in language are only in their infancy. To promote
gender justice in language in Kenya, it is necessary to acknowledge the rights of women and men to
equal representation of their gender in language and speech and, therefore, raise a question of linguistic
rights of the sexes. Language is a tool used to perpetuate gender differences. Feminists have advocated
against the use of sexist language. They caution against the use of discriminating, over-differentiating,
belittling, demeaning tones when there is no corresponding male terminology in place. An example is
words like slut and whore for promiscuous women yet there are no names given to the men.

When retrogressive cultures are done away with, Kenya will be moving one step closer to achieving
gender equity. However, the men can offer a lot of resistance when it comes to cultural reorientation
thus, they need to be engaged in this reforms.

Stanford’s recent announcement to support paid maternity leave for female graduate students. Despite
advances, unexamined biases remain within the culture of mathematics and science, many are held
unconsciously by men and also by women—in university math departments as well as in our society in
general. Progress is being made to improve gender equity in mathematics but that much still needs to
be done. Kenyan educational institutions should strive to do away with the culture of saying that subject
like Math‘s and physics are for men and women should only pursue languages and social sciences. They
should be ready to remove discriminatory practices in the education sector to help the countries
developmental growth. They should follow the example of Harvard and Stanford.