Charade over Gender Bill must now stop

This past week, the National Assembly once again failed to raise the quorum to debate legislation aimed at amending the Constitution to fulfil the constitutional provision that no more than two thirds of any public institution should be made up of one gender.

For the past nine years since the promulgation of the new Constitution, Parliament has been unable to effect this change, raising questions as to why MPs still pretend to care.

An interesting point to consider in this matter is that the Constitution does not require Parliament to amend it in order to achieve this ‘two thirds gender rule’.

The makers of this Constitution anticipated that Parliament would take other legislative and policy measures to ensure compliance with it.

It would be absurd, in my view, for the Constitution to require that it be changed immediately upon promulgation to give effect to another provision in the same Constitution.

If Parliament is finding it difficult to implement the rule, and if it is necessary to then make any amendments to the Constitution, the most logical thing would be to review the constitutional provision on gender equity itself.

I am not persuaded that this is actually necessary at this time, though.

Parliament ought to amend the laws governing elections in this country to ensure that the product of any election would meet the gender rule without flouting other constitutional provisions at the same time.

The circus around this rule raises multiple questions about our commitment to achieving it at all.

I am now firmly convinced that Kenya is a largely misogynistic country whose majority believes that the place of women is in the kitchen and not in ‘important’ places like Parliament.

It appears the majority of Kenyans believe that the few nominated and special women seats in Parliament are sufficient.

This explains why the gender rule matter has been treated like a foreign imposition with strings attached, for which reason we must always appear to be doing something about it even if we are not.

Secondly, it is clear to me that the priorities of the majority of politically-minded Kenyans are very different from those of the makers of our 2010 Constitution.

Even as we currently discuss a possible constitutional referendum, none of the issues in contention regards the gender rule.

We are focused on the treatment of election runners-up and the urgent need for a parliamentary opposition.

We are focused on a more politically inclusive Executive arm of government, no matter the gender of the officer holders.

Finally, it appears to me that many commentators have been assuming that this political matter of gender equity is also biological.

Newspaper reports every time the parliamentary vote on it flops have focused on the presence (or absence) of women parliamentarians in the Chamber.

This is strange given that even if all women MPs showed up for the vote, and voted unanimously for the constitutional change, the vote would still fail without the support of the majority men in the current House.

As a result of these realisations, it is imperative that all those still interested in gender equity withdraw their support for this bad bill and all its equivalents, and instead pursue other means of achieving these goals rather than depending on misogynistic structures created to exclusively serve the interests of powerful men.

Atwoli is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Dean, Moi University School of Medicine.