HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 238315,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/238315/?format=api",
"text_counter": 203,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Ms. Karua",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs",
"speaker": {
"id": 166,
"legal_name": "Martha Wangari Karua",
"slug": "martha-karua"
},
"content": " Mr. Temporary October 19, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3087 Deputy Speaker, Sir, I appreciate that the message is sinking. I will repeat that in many instances, these organisations have acted as conciliators. If people have experienced failures of their marriages after that, then the parties to the marriage must blame themselves and not FIDA. Let me go on with my contribution. The main feature of this Sessional Paper is to enhance women's economic empowerment, noting that women, not only form a good proportion of the population, but also contribute greatly to the economic development of this country. When a society helps to uplift those who have been marginalised, it does itself a favour. By uplifting women, Kenya will be doing itself a favour and accelerating its own development. Women are slightly over 51 per cent of the population. This means that if women are not facilitated to realise their full potential, this country cannot move at the pace that we deserve to be moving at. Leaving slightly over 50 per cent behind means that our progression is arrested by the slow progress of that sizeable part of the population. It is, therefore, a matter of concern to both men and women of goodwill to ensure that we address this situation to enable every individual and citizen in our country to realize their full potential and to participate fully in all the spheres of public life and to grow to an extent where they participate fully in the development of our nation. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are happy that with regard to access to primary education, the Government has already addressed that issue. The issue about secondary school bursaries is being addressed and we are looking forward to continued improvement. The same applies to university education. We are looking forward to the enhancement of the loans available. We would want to see our children getting access the same way we got access when we went to universities and the children of the poor and the rich could access university education without fear of dropping out because of fees. We know that the situation is slowly being addressed by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) and that quite a proportion of the fees required in the public universities is being availed. But we would want to reach a level where the entire loan is automatically available to each student. We would also want to see a situation where our women get out of the shackles of poverty, where both men and women are able to access their means of production, whether to land or loans, and where they are able to progress each according to their ability. We also want to reach a situation where we are freed from biases in our mind, so that no hon. Member will ever again stand in this House to assume that men are of superior intelligence to women or vice-versa and where every hon. Member will assess each fellow hon. Member according to their ability and not to generalize and target a certain category of hon. Members or gender for either criticism or unwarranted attacks. This is what this worthy policy paper is seeking to do. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have already talked about accessing justice. But we would also want to see, especially in the on-going constitutional review, issues of discriminatory laws being addressed so that women and men are truly equal under our laws and are treated without discrimination in all matters, as stated in this policy, including matters of adoption, marriage, divorce, burial; in other words, matters of personal law. Currently, women are discriminated under various personal and customary laws. When you dig deeper, you find that customs are used as an excuse to oppress women. Where I come from, I have heard it often said that: \"Women do not inherit land\". I have gone back to oral tradition and I have discovered that this is a phrase used by those who want to marginalize women and deny them inheritance. In our traditional society, there were no title deeds. There was, therefore, no exclusive ownership of land by individuals. Land was communally owned by the community and both men and women accessed the land they needed. In the farming communities, women accessed land where they could cultivate their food crops. If it was for grazing, they accessed it for their goats. Equally, men accessed it for their activities. Whether in marriage or divorce, women were able to access land any time they needed it because it was the primary means of production. They also accessed it to build 3088 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES October 19, 2006 their dwelling houses. In modern day, we are being told women in certain communities do not own land according to customs. Which are these customs when we know that customs did not deny women the access? The modern day title deeds are exclusionary. They exclude everybody else except their holder. Our societies, unfortunately, did not realise this. Sometimes, it was one representative of a household, or even clan, who got registered as the owner of the land, only today to claim to be the owner. It is time we went back to our roots and understood that our traditional society based its decisions on social justice, where nobody was excluded from earning a livelihood from what God had naturally bestowed as the natural resources of that community or country. We, therefore, must stop using and abusing customs so as not to oppress any of our citizens. It is, therefore, my hope that all the hon. Members of this august Assembly and all the people of goodwill in this country, will support policies that recognise that every individual, whether man or woman, is first and foremost, a human being, born equal and with a right just as any other person. That individual must be given equal opportunity to access all the good things in life and be able to grow to their full potential. We can imagine a situation where even in this august Assembly we are still referring to each other sometimes in derogatory terms based on gender. Then how are we able to deal even with our constituents. Once again, I want to congratulate this Ministry for bringing this very much needed Policy Paper, so that we address this situation. It is also necessary that we ensure a balanced representation of men and women in positions of leadership and decision making. If in this House we had 140 women, and the rest were men, a situation would never arise where Members of one gender assume superiority to Members of another gender. We want to see everybody participating according to ability. That is what this Paper is meant to do. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on health and population, we also want to see everybody access the relevant information to be able to manage themselves. We also want to see both men and women in the first instance, not only take care of their health, but also their sexuality, so that women do not have to carry the burden of taking care of their own sexuality and that of men. This will ensure that when women and men engage in social activities which end up with a woman getting pregnant, both of them, bear the burden or pleasure of bringing up the fruits of their union and not leaving the child to be brought up by the woman; whether in marriage or outside marriage. I do hope that once we enact this Paper, we shall also embark on looking at our laws which do not encourage equality. I am referring to the Children's Act, which leaves the men out of the responsibility. We must encourage both our boys and girls to grow up as responsible citizens. We must ensure that, in these modern days, when you can ascertain with precision who is the father of a child, both the father and mother should take responsibility of bringing up a child that they have brought into this world. That is what I mean by saying that both men and women must take care of their sexuality. It must not be assumed that it is the women to prevent a pregnancy from occurring or to watch out their behaviour. Both men and women must watch out, or they suffer the consequences. In the same way, we want to see both men and women take responsibility, so that they avoid the deadly HIV/AIDS infection. They can do so by responsible behaviour and being able to take care of themselves, without violence being visited on either. We know that, currently, women are on the receiving end within marriage, and even outside marriage, because of the violence meted on them when they say no. That, again, is a serious situation that should be addressed by a deliberate policy. We also want to see women participating in peace, security and conflict resolution. If we were to take the recent happenings where there have been flare-ups of tension between communities - most of it politically instigated--- We want to see women participating in dissuading their children and other members of the society from engaging in acts that end up hurting the entire society. October 19, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3089 In other words, in a nutshell, this policy is saying - and I support - that both men and women, boys and girls should be fully involved in every aspect that affect their lives. To be fully involved, as I have stated, awareness is key. Information is power, whether to a Member of Parliament, a citizen on the street, the poor or the rich. Utterances in and out of this House have revealed that ignorance can be located everywhere, even among the mighty. We, therefore, need to look for information to be able to carry out our mandate, and to carry out our responsibilities as leaders. With those very many words, I beg to support."
}