Peter Ocholla – The Caucus for women’s leadership

We are working against the backdrop of a presidential decree that says involve women in what you are doing. The civil service has been instructed by the president. He has even gone further and said that in structures of governance like CDF women should be in those committees. So women participation is nothing new it has always been there and we recognize it. Unfortunately we have bad cultural practices that what we are trying to demystify.

We have a pool of trained people and have equipped them with toolkits, of what we are calling community resource people or community mobilizers. These resource people are the authorities and are knowledgeable on matters of governance, gender and leadership because they have been trained for that. We intend to not only use these resource people as agents but they will be trained further just before the elections. They will be trained on the election process and the election rules. The larger responsibility of these community resource people will also extend to voter education. Read More

Okwi Okoh - Presenter, Africa Journal
The more experienced male politicians should adopt upcoming female aspirants and show them through the ropes. They need to mentor them and give them opportunities so that they can then be more visible to the electorate.Increase in womens leadership starts with you! When propaganda is targeted at women do you just laugh it off? What comments do you make about women and driving?

Bramwel Karamoja, Mediawise Communication, Nairobi.

Men are supposed to lead I believe as well as women. Men are supposed to share responsibilities with women. Society has changed, modernity has changed the way people look at women which traditionally meant that women were supposed to be subordinates to men.Nations around the world have been ruled by men since time immemorial, it is time to bring women on board, after all they are our mothers, sisters and wives like the president put it the other day. The question on whether I would vote for a woman as president, on what basis would I not? My answer is so definite, yes I would vote for a woman the position she contests not withstanding.

Peterson Nyagaresi, Ghetto Styles, Youth Group. Pumwami, Nairobi

In my view, women have been dehumanized for so long. There representation in public positions is so minimal to say the least. It is so desirous. They have been denied the opportunity to excel; this denial has come from no other quarter than from men. It will be better that we men begin to appreciate the truth that it is proper to share responsibilities with women. And that includes leadership positions. Humans are same, and I believe they are endowed equally. Men should realize that since creation, and religious books put it candidly so, men were not going to exist without women. The creation story prevails upon us to support each other. I guess we ought to be doing exactly that. Supporting each other in my opinion does not then translate into men being leaders and women followers. Let us give women a chance.