My friend, Njeri Thorne, writes with clarity about the concrete slabs women must lift, before they break the proverbial glass ceiling, before they can be accepted as leaders. I find that there is little I can add. However, I would beg her to temper her thoughts for they don't paint a complete picture of what is a complex situation.
Allow me a personal examination of what it means to be led by women or to work for and with women. My boss is a woman. He deputy is a woman. The senior ranks of my department have more women than men, a ration of four-to-one. Those at or near my rank outnumber men three-to-one. My boss is an excellent mentor; she knows more about our line of work than almost anyone I know who does what we do. She is firm, decisive and precise. I do not know anyone who works with or for her who would describe her as "bossy" or "bitchy." Her leadership qualities are beyond compare, and if she offers you advice in the face of a contrary advice from a man, you would be best advised to take hers over the man's. She is, quite simply, the best at what she does.
Now it might be that she has had to work twice as hard to be the best at it, but I don't think so. Ever since Wangari Maathai blazed a trail as the first woman in Kenya to earn a doctorate at the University of Nairobi, capping it with being the first African woman to be bestowed with the Nobel Prize for Peace, Kenyan women have made strides in leadership positions. We shouldn't forget the path other Kenyan women have blazed; Charity Ngilu, Graze Ogot, Winnie Mitula, Martha Karua, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Njoki Ndung'u, Maison Leshoomo, and the inimitable Oscar winner, Lupita Nyong'o. More and more women are changing the narrative that women cannot and should not lead.
I do not have to make peace with it; I have benefitted from the strong leadership by women in my life since the day I was born. It is as natural for me to see a woman in a leadership position as it is to see a man. I do not find it anomalous. I find it scandalous that fewer men than I thought possible recognise this basic truism. I was raised to respect the views of everyone regardless of their sex or gender; the only rule was that for your views to prevail they must be sound, founded on facts and evidence, and delivered with erudition and clarity. My family has more women PhDs than you can shake a stick at, more graduates than is normal for the average Kenyan family, because both sets of grandparents refused to kowtow to the cultural tropes about "educated" women and the dangers to the family unit because of that education.
It is important to point out that women make the same mistakes as men, sometimes even in the same way. There are those who abuse their power, and who use their femininity as a shield against scrutiny. few today will recall that woman head of a donor-funded HIV/AIDS programme who was convicted of embezzlement. She had walked the same path countless men had walked before and after her. She is not the only one either.
It is also important to point out that Kenya remains deeply patriarchal, and my family is an anomaly in the way daughters and sons have been treated equally. I was surprised to learn that there are more women law graduates than men for the first time, and I hope this is the beginning of the transformation of the face of leadership in Kenya. We have had the Two-thirds Rule since 2010, yet even the Supreme Court punted on whether it could be practicably enforced. I disagreed with its cogent reasoning. I still do. Women have the same rights as men. It is that simple.
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