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{
    "id": 799344,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/799344/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 249,
    "type": "other",
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    "content": "our fair ladies have said. However, I am in sympathy and in tune with them because I believe that they are fighting a wider cause for liberating humanity to understand, appreciate itself and know that coexistence is the way forward. Anything short of coexistence is courting disaster. Therefore, I congratulate them for the meeting in Iceland. They went there at a time when it was winter. I do not know how they survived that winter - Reykjavik is a very cold place. Nevertheless, they made it. The one thing that I learned from this world forum, which was also a summit, is that there are issues that were discussed there which have a great import on how we conduct our businesses in our respective countries. I remember way back, when there was the Beijing meeting, wives lost their husbands and husbands lost their wives. It was such a cantankerous and disruptive conference. When women went to Beijing, they came out and wanted to lord over their husbands. That is where the problem started and a number of women in Kenya fell victim. I am glad that we are over that hump. As time has gone by, we have been able to overcome those impediments and more so, when we were able to promulgate our Kenya Constitution in 2010. I am happy that it is one of the experiences that we learnt. When I was the Minister for Education, I was in for a very difficult time. We had just gone through the post-election violence and you could see the kind of helplessness that the women society faced in that crisis. To get them out of that crisis, one of the things that I had to deal with is the question of a girl-child who was completely and totally marginalized. We had to even create special slots during the transition period, so that they could be offered certain places in our schools. I expected this to be a progressive programme and not a one-off programme. I think that one of the things that we need to do is to look at where a possibility of marginalization of the girl-child is likely to occur and take affirmative action. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, in the same breath, I also noted that the boy-child was being marginalized, particularly in the Maasai land. I do not want any reaction on this matter. It was a personal observation that I made when I was there. We soon realized that the boy-child was being locked up in manyattas and going out as morans. They were, therefore, absconding from attending classes. It was important to bring the boy-child back to school because an interactive level was very important. When I looked at the sex ratio of attendance in schools, in some areas like Central Province and Nairobi, the ratio of girls in schools was more than that of boys. That was a good thing. If you notice, in the last three or four years, when the national examination results have been released, the performance indices have shown that girls have the capacity to perform better than the boys. That does not mean that I have marginalized the boys. I think that in a competitive field, that is the way that it should be; one leads and another one follows. The leadership roles would also be exchanged. A section that always perturbs me is the women marginalization in access to healthcare. I experienced that during my formative years as a medical officer in remote areas like Wajir. That was quite an experience of its own. Whenever you went, you would be the doctor, anaesthetist, surgeon and nurse. The paucity of the number of staff that I witnessed in those areas was unimaginable. Therefore, I hope that our county governments will take seriously the issue of maternal child health. The death rate per every 100,000 births is very high. We still need to work on bringing the percentage down. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}