Despite recent gains, women still face challenges

According to the 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census (KPHC), women comprise 50.5 percent of the total 10 population in the country. Nevertheless, their representation across well-being indicators is not equal to men.

To begin with, women are more likely to be poor than men. Findings of the latest Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 2020 Comprehensive Poverty Analysis report show that 65 percent of women aged 35-59 years are multidimensionally poor compared to 56 percent of their male 11 counterparts.

The KNBS Economic Survey 2019 figures show that women are underrepresented in wage employment comprising slightly above a third.

Similarly, they are underrepresented in most sectors of formal employment requiring high education or specialized skills, including information and communication, financial and insurance activities, real estate, manufacturing, administration and support services, and professional, scientific, and technical activities.

In addition, they are 13 overrepresented in vulnerable employment 68% compared to 39% of men and in sectors that highlight women’s traditional roles in society, namely human health, and social work activities 58%, and activities of households as employers or domestic work services.

However, the gender gap in lower levels of education is narrower than in the labor market.

Women are also more disadvantaged than men in access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which enhances their empowerment through improved access to information, financial services and products, and a higher degree of independence and autonomy including for professional purposes.

The role women play in agriculture and rural society in Sub-Saharan Africa is fundamental to agricultural and rural development.

The Technical Centre for Agriculture and rural cooperation (CTA) reported in 1993 that women in Africa make up more than one-third of the workforce, within pastoralist and mixed farming systems, livestock plays an important role in supporting women and in improving their financial situation and women are heavily engaged in the sector.

Approximately two-thirds of poor livestock keepers, totaling approximately 400 million people, are women.

According to Food and Agricultural Organization, women represent a considerable share of the agricultural labor force, either as individual food producers or as agricultural workers.

Despite women’s important role in the agricultural sector, however, empirical evidence shows that they face several constraints and lag behind men with regard to agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa due to the gender inequalities that persist in respect of access to, control over, and utilization of productive resources such as land, livestock, labor, education, extension, and financial services, and technology.

For instance, FAO says that land is considered the most important household asset for households that depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

However, across all developing regions of the world, women are consistently less likely to own or operate land; they are less likely to have access to rented land, and the land they do have access to usually be of poorer quality and in smaller plots.

Furthermore, a study by the African Women‘s Studies Centre in 2014 in Kenya found that only 20.7 percent of women own land compared to 43.8 percent of men.

Additionally, legal regulations and customary laws in Kenya often restrict women’s access to and control over assets that can be accepted as collateral such as land. Biased land inheritance rights often favor male relatives, leaving both widows and daughters at a disadvantage.