11 March 2010
opinion
Nairobi — The women's movement in Kenya is in its death throes. It would be a shame to put the final nail on its coffin. The booming voice we once had has faded to a whisper, the captains either co-opted into government or limping along in desultory fashion.
Talking about women is an industry in itself. A lot of words flow in boardrooms, policy documents and the best of Kenya's hotels. Much of it is packaged so cleverly that it camouflages the fact that there is nothing new under that particular sun.
There are more women than ever in prominent positions in government -- and even more women frustrated by the gap between policy and practice. If you are the kind that enjoys digging into documentation, there is plenty to chew on.
But it has been a long time since International Women's Year in 1975 and it often feels like two steps forward and one backward.
Last week's report on the performance of girls in secondary school examinations was not only hugely disappointing, for example, but it also poses the danger of fatigue arising from a battle seemingly with no end.
It is not entirely unexpected that the one day dedicated to women -- March 8 -- went past in such muted fashion. But for a series of boring supplements blowing the expected horn in government and donor circles, there was little that stood out.
The decline of the movement began the day we declared victory against the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi, who in 1985 sent the women's rights industry into tailspin because the word "equality" had been mentioned in the same breath as politics and women.
But optimism once ruled. Life would be fantastic under the National Rainbow Coalition. Equality, inasmuch as it is humanly possible to dictate it, would be ours for the taking. Women would compete on a level playing field and the one-third principle would take care of the limping troops.
But change is a process, not an event, and reality dawned pretty fast. You go through a lot of back and forth. You get stuck in semantics and the art of political canvassing continues to elude most women.
These days, but for a few voices such as Ann Njogu -- she who received the courage award from Hillary Clinton recently -- it is pretty much everyone for themselves. No one wants to get their hands dirty, much less stick out their neck.
Having become deeply embedded in the women's movement somewhere in the mid-80s, I never thought I would live to see a time when the one day internationally assigned to reflecting on the role and status of women would be just another 24 hours in the calendar.
But the faint pulse of the women's movement does not necessarily mean there is little going on. The Kibaki regime may have paid lip service to women in the early stages and even authored interesting policy directions in recent times, but that has never been the real challenge.
With the goodies that came along with a new political dispensation, we stopped all pretence at sustaining a movement and many haggled for Government appointments -- which were hugely rewarding -- but also held them down with the protocol of a massive bureaucracy.
The women's movement, or whatever patchwork is left of it, faces a crisis of relevance on more than one front.
As the career protesters of yesteryear got tired of living on crumbs and jumped onto the political gravy train, the youthful element of the population that stood to benefit in the long term grew up and got sucked into the celebrity culture where glamour rules.
In a sense, the women's movement may have just become a victim of its own success. Many of today's young women have no memory of that dreadful word "feminism". They take opportunities and success for granted and have ditched propaganda for the lifestyle of the superstars on the international scene.
The pragmatic approach may stick in the craw of diehard activists, for it speaks of a "me, me" culture, but there's also the question: What did idealism and the softly-softly approach ever do for the females of the species, anyway?
The golden oldies like Eddah Gachukia, Phoebe Asiyo, Jane Kiano, Julia Ojiambo, Wambui Otieno and others run the risk of becoming just a footnote in Kenya's history. I can bet you my last shilling that no one has ever thought of a monument in honour of that generation of social activists.
I want to believe that our contemporary heroines such as Millie Odhiambo and Njoki Ndung'u will keep the fire burning -- and rescue us from the mediocrity of our-turn-to-eat culture.
The standards of proof may always be higher for women in the workplace and the public eye, but we are also the sex that gives birth to babies -- and you can't get stronger or more powerful than that.
Change is often a slow process, but that's no excuse for laying down arms. High heels and designer handbags are not all bad. They can come in pretty handy in beating down the opposition.
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