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"speaker_name": "Mrs. Mugo",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Beth Wambui Mugo",
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me the opportunity to support Sessional Paper No.2 of 2006, on Gender Equality and Development. I would like to congratulate the Minister for finally bringing this Sessional Paper, which you agree with me has taken rather long. When the Beijing Conference was held, we ratified the adoption of a platform of action in this House. It has taken almost six years to work on the Sessional Paper on the National Policy on Gender. However, it is better late than never. My prayer and most the women's prayer is that it will not take as long to implement and put in place mechanisms which will realise what is in this document because it is good. It is a good Sessional Paper if implemented. We have been talking for a long time about gender and equality. I would like to take this opportunity to thank His Excellency the President for leading the way and announcing during the recent Kenyatta Day celebrations, the Affirmative Action Policy where he proposed that for all public jobs, and I hope even private, one-third of them be given to women. It is time we put a legal framework around that policy to make sure that it is implementable. You all recall that we had a Bill in this House for Affirmative Action, I believe in 2002, which was referred by the Attorney-General to Bomas. The Bill was unanimously agreed on in this House, that we have a one-third affirmative action, especially for Parliamentary seats, Cabinet seats and municipality seats. Unfortunately, that has never been effected. In fact, I think it was unfortunate that the Attorney-General took that action because we could have passed the Bill in this House. It is time to go back and follow up the Affirmative Action Bill so that we pass it. We had debated it extensively and we do not have to debate it again. With that kind of legal framework, we will be sure that what is being proposed will be implementable. Together with that, this will require funding. I would like to ask the Minister for Finance, as we pass this Sessional Paper, to make sure that his next Budget will reflect the wishes; that is, the funding of programmes aimed at supporting equality programmes. High on the agenda is the economic empowerment of women. Most of the abuse that is meted out women is due to their weak bargaining position. Most of them will go through violence in marriage just because they want their children to be fed and educated. Others cannot even negotiate their sexuality even when we know there is the HIV/AIDS because they are 3204 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 26, 2006 dependent on men. By empowering women economically, we will guarantee them a voice socially, economically and in political circles. On the girl child issues, we are going through a hard time when girls are raped and defiled. We now have law in place, thanks to Ms. Ndung'u's Bill on sexual offences. As a beginning point of honouring gender equality, we are calling on law enforcing agencies, as well as the courts to start using the law because it was not passed to be kept on the shelves. It should be seen to be effective. That will bring a lot of respect for many girls and women. The Sessional Paper which was debated and passed in this House earlier on gives a lot of equality to the girl child in terms of education. We even proposed affirmative action for the girl child because the Ministry of Education is committed to implementing this Sessional Paper and making sure that the girl child gets equal education and training, as her boy counterpart. Having said that, the girl child still needs a lot of support from her family, socially, and the Government to make sure that she fully enjoys her rights. If we can have girls growing up knowing that they are equal and being treated equally, even in their adulthood, the battle of equality would be lighter, unlike now. On the political field and the decision-making, 21 years down the line from when the conference took place here in Nairobi and then we went to Beijing, New York and tomorrow we are back again with another big conference reviewing the gains, we still have nothing much tangible to show. Yet the countries around us have embraced affirmative action. They have many women in Cabinet, Parliament, Permanent Secretaries or judges. This is where the decisions are made. This is where the cake is divided. As long as we have no women in those places or very few of them, women issues will continue to take second place. That must change. We must emulate the good practices of our neighbours and have goodwill to women in this country, especially for the coming general elections. We hope that everybody will support affirmative action to make sure that this House will have not less than one- third of women. That goes for the Cabinet, too. I want to call on the President to make sure that this pronouncement is implemented. I even want to go a step further and say that instead of saying one- third women each time there is employment, it should be the other way round until we catch up with the male gender. All the major employment positions now should go to women, much more so in the higher positions of employment in this country. If we did it that way, we would have an opportunity of realising this affirmative action, at least, in our life time. It is a shame that this House can boast of only 18 women out of 222 Members! Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also want to congratulate the men of this country, because I think they are beginning to have the goodwill. We cannot realise what is in the Sessional Paper until there is change of attitude in our communities. The laws as they are written do not help much. I think what will help more is the willpower among our male folk, beginning from the boys all the way to the grown up men. Women also sometimes accept their position and think that God meant for them to be lowly. God never meant that because we are all created in his image, and we read that in the Book of Genesis. God created man and woman in His image; the rest is man-made. Those are the attitudes we seek to change. I want to thank the Minister for Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services because he said that he will ensure that the pronouncement of the President is implemented. But I also want to call on all the other Ministries to make sure that they put mechanisms in their Ministries to make sure that this Sessional Paper is implemented. On our part, as Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association, we are set, together with other women organisations, to take count and to monitor and make sure it happens. Sometime ago, there was a request for a report from the Government showing after every six months, the implementation status of the Beijing Platform for Action. I want to ask the Minister October 26, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3205 now to implement that, because it never happened. We all know that women form over 80 per cent of the labour force in the agricultural sector. If we empowered them, it means this country will develop much more faster, we will be richer and our standards of living will go up. This is because even as we speak today, the poor of the poor are women. If that situation remains, it means that even the households cannot be well-fed, and even the children and the men of this nation cannot be properly taken care of. Women are the care-givers. This is why women all over the world are respected, promoted, protected and loved. So, as mothers and leaders, we are prepared to take that position ourselves. That is why we are asking our male counterparts in this House when issues to do with women development come to this House, they give them that importance. They should fill the benches when we are discussing them, because these are issues that concern them very directly."
}