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{
    "id": 902529,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/902529/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 354,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13119,
        "legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
        "slug": "agnes-zani"
    },
    "content": "Rwanda has stood out as a case study. They have made the case for themselves and the women have proven themselves. How has the Government strategy worked to bring this out and put it in such a way that it amplifies the role played by women? We need to sort the lens of how people see things. Women do good things but when they are presented, they dwell on the negatives. So, it is important to have a concerted effort. We should not just think of the families, political and economic institutions but also other players such as the media to restore human dignity. I always say that first and foremost, you are a human who deserves to have human dignity. Secondly, you are either a man or woman. You are still a person and therefore the dignity that goes with being a person is important. So, such kind of politics needs to be addressed right from the beginning. We know that the wife of the Duke of Sussex got a baby recently and they are planning to bring him up in a sort of neutral way. Is that the best way to go? What about the African culture and the place of a man in society? Maybe that authority created the stability that was so important because they respected women. I am a Digo and my mother is a Giriama. Giriama women walked with mahando with their breasts out. There were few rape cases during those days. Rape is related to lack of respect and traditional aspects that enhanced women‘s place. Women were respected because they cooked, took care of their families and they were leaders within their own right. What has happened to that kind of socialization? How are we socializing our children? Are we clearly defining to them gender roles? All these create an idea about the culture, attitudes and values because you cannot change somebody when they are 20 or 25 years old. If they have grown up to disrespect women, they cannot change at 25. Likewise, if women have grown up to disrespect men, they are not going to change when they are 25. What we missed somewhere along the line is how to infuse all these within our educational curriculum as we thought about changing our curriculum from outcome oriented to competency oriented. We hope that these values will be infused. The United States of America (USA) was able to change a lot by introducing patriotism as a key element in their academic programmes and it changed the way they viewed themselves. That is what we need to do in Kenya. We need to infuse the values of equality, governance, human dignity, social justice, inclusivity and human rights and make sure that marginalised groups do not exist. All these should be infused within our psyche, as a country, so as to push this country to a point where people blend. When you do that, automatically you will be dealing with issues of gender inequalities. Gender inequalities might be second-tier responses to other inequalities that are already there. They might also be as a result of interaction from other variables that are already there. As Kenya, we had our story which was simple. We need to look at the provisions in the Constitution that we have. There is a provision for making sure that there is at least not more than two-thirds of any particular gender in the county assemblies because women are less elected. Therefore, many proposals were put in place. The proposal that finally ended up as the Duale Bill was to allow people to move Article 177 and infuse that Article in the National Assembly and the Senate. It seems like a very straightforward thing to do. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}