Not on the same page.

Hollywood has been comfortable with the idea of strong women for ages. For those who were enamoured of Sydney Bristow (Alias, 2001 to 2006), there was no doubt that she called the shots and that people deferred to her, followed her lead, or feared her. Kenya's entertainment industry, such as it is, is yet to present narratives that portray women in strong positions; for the most part, as in the hip hop sub-culture in Hollywood, women in Kenyan entertainment are eye-candy. So too in politics, with the exceptions that are Martha Karua, Charity Ngilu, the late Grace Ogot and the late Wangari Maathai.

Do you remember the "Dame wa Mtaa" meme during the 2013 general election? Do you remember the "I will strip if Uhuru is indicted at The Hague" dare? More recently, do you remember the "Let the women dance topless to revive tourism at the coast" idiocy? It is snot too farfetched to state that women are not held in high esteem by the peoples of Kenya. Gado once published an editorial cartoon that reminded us that even as newscasters, women are valued more for how high they are willing to lift their hemlines than the content of that which they will inform us on our nightly news.

To achieve the Two-thirds Gender Rule, it will not be enough to change the law or to enforce the law. We must change how we see women and how we value their contributions. Look at the boards of private-sector corporations and you discover that despite the growing number of women university graduates with post-graduate experience, they sit on few boards and that many of the same faces sit on multiple boards. When it comes to women CEOs of blue chip companies, the numbers are even starker.

We live under the illusion that Kenyans care about politics more than anything else. I suspect that Kenyans care about their money more than anything else and this obsession is reflected in whom they place their confidence to manage their money. To my knowledge, it is only DTB that has a woman CEO; Barclays, Standard Chartered, KCB, Consolidated, National, Co-operative, Equity...all male CEOs and men-dominated boards. Since we do not seem to trust women to manage our money, on the lesser obsession that is politics, do you see women being elected in droves? I do not.

We know for a fact (thank you Institute of Economic Affairs) that it will not break the bank if we elect or nominate women to the Parliament. What we know, however, is that culturally, politically and economically, despite the numbers of women entrepreneurs and graduates, we are unwilling to let women play commanding roles in leadership. There is the law. Then there is what we want. On the Two-thirds Gender Rule, these two are not on the same page yet.