A history of Kenya´s female parliamentary pionneers

In the last years, the fact more and more African women have been elected members of national parliament has been celebrated as an extraordinary and new success. Meanwhile, more and more countries have adopted gender quotas to ensure a fair representation of female politicians. It is true that the number of women in African parliaments has tremendously increased in African countries over the last decades. And surely, this achievement is extraordinary as African politics remain dominated by male leaders while women tend to be represented as being too weak to assume positions of power. Their success therefore entailed enormous political courage as well as many personal and even financial sacrifices. And, yet, is this achievement really new? The political, economic, financial, cultural and social barriers hindering womens representation in parliaments today (in early 21st century) have been well researched. But the history of the women pioneers who vied for a parliamentary seat once their country became independent has been largely unexplored. It is therefore fair to say that very little is known about the history of womens fights for parliamentary powers. This project aims at precisely doing this looking at Kenyan history and filling the gap in the current knowledge about Kenyan womens political history. Kenyan women are not new to politics. They resisted British colonization and fought for independence as freedom fighters or political activists very early on. And yet, few traces of their struggles remain: women have been largely put aside both in Kenyan politics and in Kenyan history. Upon Kenyas independence in 1963, there was virtually no woman in politics. When we look at parliamentary archives, however, one thing is clear: there were a few women who dared campaigning for a parliamentary seat. To do so, they must have been very active in mobilizing supporters, spreading and defending their ideas in large rallies, going door to door at a time no one expected a woman to be so publicly politically active. Who were these women? Why did they campaign and what did they do afterwards? How can we document and write about their political endeavor? These are the main questions this project asks. To answer these questions, this project will document the political ideas and objectives these women defended during their parliamentary campaigns and, for the happy few, once in office. Using archival documents (state archives, newspapers, personal archives) and oral history (interviews), the aim is to make womens contribution to formal, national politics visible, even when they lost the election. Indeed, this project challenges histories that only remember (male) winners in African politics. By looking on women who campaigned and won or lost, this project aims showing how complex Kenyan womens long struggle for political power in national representative institutions has been and how important it is to write (African) history in a more inclusive way.