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Women of Kenya

For this article, I plan on using the three short topics as a guideline to add-on and enhance the article along with starting a new topic on Kenyan women in politics and maybe add more topics in the future.

Lead:

(Previous Lead) The history of the evolution of the traits of women in Kenya can be divided into Women within Swahili culture, Women in British Kenya, and Kenyan Women post-Independence.

Me: The condition and status of the female population in Kenya has faced many changes over the past century. The British colonized Kenya from 1888-1963. British imperialism had a large impact on Kenyan culture and still does today. Before British colonization, women played important roles in the community from raising children and maintaining the family to working on farms and in marketplaces. The influence of a patriarchy became even stronger with colonization which stripped women of many responsibilities and opportunities they once had. Even after Kenya regained independence in 1963, women were still oppressed and not given many opportunities like education except for a small number of young women. Women still faced many problems such as child marriages and arranged marriages, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the AIDS epidemic as well as lack of education. There are very few women in power in Kenya which also plays a role in the continued oppression of the female population.

Education:

The extent of education women received pre-colonization was how to do the jobs women had been doing for years such as wife, caregiver, child birth and housekeeping. Playing this role gave many Kenyan women a sense of identity which most women cherished. During and after colonization, however, educating the youth became more of a commonly accepted idea. Although there was access to education, it was difficult for Kenyan kids, especially girls, to receive a formal education simply because parents did not find it necessary to send their daughters to school. The education that young girls were receiving was similar to that of what they would learn from their mothers pre-colonization. That included skills such as child care and sewing and if the girls were lucky, they would be taught how to read and write. In the late 1900's it became more common for a girl to receive a primary education, but men, on the other hand, were going off to earn degrees and get jobs whereas women were staying at home taking care of the home.

By the 1990's, almost 50% of the students attending primary schools inKenya were girls. This large jump occurred over time due to Kenya's independence and the development of easier accessible public primary schools throughout Kenya. The Kenyan government has put a larger focus on educating the youth because they believe that it will lead to an overall more prosperous country. According to the Republic of Kenya Embassy's website, they concluded, "...it has been established that by providing primary education to women, a society is able to hasten its development."

The situation for Kenyan girls in secondary school is slightly different than how it was for primary school. At the time of Independence, about 32% of enrollment in Kenyan secondary schools was young women and 68% young men. Over time, those numbers have gone up, but in the most recent studies, it is still 40% to 60% favoring young men attending secondary schools in Kenya. This gap can be explained by the gap between schools available for boys and girls. In 1968 in Kenya, there were 148 government funded primary schools for boys, 61 government funded secondary schools for girls, and 28 co-ed secondary schools funded by the government. Because young men in Kenya have more than two times the amount of schools available for them to attend than their female counterparts, many more boys end up going to school because it is easier for them to access secondary schooling. More secondary schools have been built in Kenya since 1968, but that large gap still remains.

Women in Kenyan Politics:

More and more women around the world are getting elected into office and the ideas of gender equality and feminism are becoming more widespread. In Kenya, however, women are not getting many decision making roles in the government which further sets women back. Although Kenya is behind in this case, there are a few very influential women who took seats in the Kenyan government.

 Wangari Maathai 

Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her "contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." She was also elected a member of the Kenyan parliament and worked in Kenyan politics for over two decades which was extremely threatening to her male counterparts who she surpassed throughout her time working in the Kenyan Government. Maathai was not directly a feminist activist, but an environmental activist who inspired other women in Kenya and around the world to go into politics and activism. Maathai was also considered to be a "bottom-up" worker as opposed to the "top-down" ruling that Kenya was so accustomed to having for decades past. This was another way she was able to inspire women and other minority groups who were silenced by the government in the past.