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THE PRESIDENCY
MINISTRY OF DEVOLUTION AND PLANNING
Equality,
Development.
Maternal
Healthcare
and
Global
partnership
for
To begin with, Kenyas Constitution (2010), has been lauded as one of the
most progressive, comprehensive and all-encompassing constitutions in the
world, with many gains for women and girls. The Constitution specifically
guarantees gender equality through provisions which promote fundamental
freedoms for all persons regardless of age, sex, gender, religious affiliations
or persuasion. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of among other
things, sex, pregnancy and marital status. The Constitution recognizes
economic and social rights including the right to property, housing, a clean
environment, health and education among others. Legislative and Policy
measures are being undertaken to give effect to the provisions of the
Constitution which include ensuring fair representation of women in key
decision making positions, and that no more than 2/3rds of any one gender
should hold elective or appointive public positions.
As a result of implementation of the constitution, it is worth noting that
there has been marked progress in Womens participation in leadership,
governance and decision-making. Today, women in parliament form 25%
of elected representatives, up from 9.9 per cent in 2007, an immediate and
significant improvement achieved within one election cycle.
At the Cabinet level, women Cabinet Secretaries comprise 33.3 per cent.
More importantly, the Government has placed much confidence in womens
leadership by appointing the women Cabinet Secretaries in strategic
Ministries.
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In the Judiciary, the Deputy Chief Justice and the Chief Registrar of the
Judiciary are women. The Supreme Court consists of 28.6 per cent of
women while court of appeal consist 30.8 per cent. In High Court 40.7 per
cent are women.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In terms of policy, the Kenyas Vision 2030, which is the Countrys national
development blue print and its attendant Mid-Term Plan, also have a strong
appreciation of gender matters, and adopts a mainstreaming principle to
gender issues. The vision for gender is that men and women enjoy a
high quality of life and equal opportunities,
services that would expand economic opportunities for them. This was
identified as one of the key factors that was slowing down women and girls
from progressing in other human development indicators. It is for this
reason that the government has established various catalytic funds, fully
funded by government aimed at bridging this gap in the interim. These
include:
The Women Enterprise Fund (WEF)
The Women Enterprise Fund was established in 2007 to provide accessible
credit to women to start and/or expand their business. The Government
has invested USD64Million since inception and this has benefitted over
1million women. The Fund has been a recipient of the 2011 MDG Award by
the MDGs Trust Fund.
The Youth Enterprise Development Fund
The Youth Enterprise Development Fund was established in 2006 focusing
on enterprise development as a key strategy to increase participation of the
Kenyan youths in employment creation and Nation building. Over USD
127Million has been disbursed to date. A good number of the youth who
have benefitted from this fund are young women.
The UWEZO Fund, (translated to mean Ability)
The Uwezo Fund was established in 2013 with an initial allocation of
USD66Million. It provides interest free credit to groups of youth, women
and persons with disability. The fund adopts a hybrid concept of Table
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