President Ruto's full wonderful International Women's Day speech in Embu!!
1. It is a great honour for me to participate in this critical event.
The commemoration of International Women's Day is a
dedicated opportunity for us, as a nation to reflect on the
progress we have made in promoting greater inclusion of women
in order to realise gender equality and create the necessary
conditions for inclusive prosperity and national development.
2. The terms under which we pursued development in the past
consigned us to slow, inadequate progress because of the
underlying fundamental inclusivity deficit which marginalised
regions, excluded sectors and disenfranchised women. Not only
did the majority of our people end up poor and deprived of
opportunities to change their prospects, but structural and
systemic discrimination also guaranteed that women inevitably
fell among the most vulnerable people in all societies.
3. It is difficult today to take seriously any growth and development
strategy which deliberately leaves anyone behind, let alone 50%
of our communities and national family. Yet we realise with
clarity that historically, this is what happened with all
development initiatives which did not proceed on the basis of
inclusivity and equality.
4. Unemployment denied women the opportunity to participate in
production, and through archaic institutions which denied
women equality, women who worked hard were deprived of the
fruits of their contribution. As a result, they were not only
marginalised but also perpetually vulnerable to much greater
exploitation, violence, insecurity, conflict, ill health and every
other adversity to which our societies were prone.
5. Even today, there are many parts of our country where the
mental image of wealth, power and status is still male, while that
of poverty and suffering is female. It is highly self-contradictory
for a society to aspire for rapid economic development while
sustaining structural conditions which exclude half of its people,
and yet that is exactly what failure to implement full inclusion of
women and gender equality does.
6. Under Article 10, our Constitution requires us to observe and
actualise human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness,
non-discrimination and the protection of the marginalised as
national values and principles of governance, which must define
both the processes and outcomes of every economic, social,
cultural and political endeavour.
7. Under Article 27 (3), the Constitution stipulates that women and
men have the right to equal treatment, including the right to
equal opportunities in political, economic, cultural and social
spheres.
8. To ensure that inclusion remains on the agenda of the national
renaissance, the Constitution mandates the State to take
legislative and other measures, including affirmative action
programmes and policies, to redress any disadvantage suffered
by individuals or groups because of past practices. More
specifically, these measures should implement the principle that
not more than two-thirds of members of elective or appointive
bodies shall be of the same gender.
9. Our blueprint for radical national transformation must therefore
be underpinned by the imperative to facilitate the full
engagement and robust participation of women in every
dimension of our development agenda. The Bottom-Up
Economic Transformation Agenda thus recognises the
unprecedented radical power in facilitating the full contribution
of all of our people in every sector, rather than just half of them:
Twice as many opportunities will be created and exploited and
twice as much productivity will be unlocked.
10. In our Plan, we recognise the need to change the prevailing
situation where female participation in key economic sectors
remained minimal, with a vast majority of those women who
participate being consigned to low-income employment and
enterprise and under poor working conditions. Generally
speaking, women remained excluded in decision-making within
our governance and political institutions, while millions suffer or
are vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence.
11. Moreover, health services have been inadequate for the needs
of women and remained inaccessible and unaffordable.
Environmental degradation, pollution and climate change have
complicated the lives and livelihoods of women, increasing their
responsibilities in unpaid care work and thus accelerating
poverty, early marriage, childhood pregnancies and other
disadvantaged conditions.
12. Through highly intentional actions, our Bottom Up Economic
Transformation Agenda prescribed a pathway to transform the
conditions, contribution and participation of women in national
development by deliberately eliminating every cultural, political,
social and other excuse for treating women unjustly.
13. To achieve this, we recognised that we would have to direct
unprecedented levels of investment to promote inclusion and
affirmative action in the socioeconomic sectors. Specifically, we
undertook to provide financial inclusion and capacity building for
women through the Hustler Fund in women-led cooperative
societies, chamas, merry-go-rounds and table banking
initiatives, and to take measures to protect them from predatory
lending.
14. We also resolved to be highly intentional in actualising the
constitutional gender inclusion principle, or the “one-thirds” rule,
through various strategies, including at the party policy level for
elective representative positions.
15. Our agenda also committed to confronting the issue of violence
against women more directly, including through the deployment
of increased personnel at the gender desks in our police stations,
and enhanced funding for the anti-female genital mutilation
campaign, as well as upholding the dignity of girls and women,
especially in learning institutions by providing menstrual hygiene
products free of charge.
16. The impact of this investment has been radically transformative.
As I explained yesterday during the launch of the G7 Caucus
Strategy, women have remained consistent in the uptake of
various financial inclusion funds and affirmative action facilities.
Women form about half, or 10.1 out of 21 million borrowers of
the Hustler Fund, and 8.8 million of them have borrowed a total
of KSh23 billion of the KSh47 billion cumulatively disbursed by
the Fund.
17. At the same time, we have disbursed KSh942 million to 1.4
million women who are members of 53,000 women groups that
are already accessing affordable financial facilities through the
Women Enterprise Fund.
18. Our approach towards investing in inclusion to accelerate
progress has been literal, direct and significant: We have put our
money where our words are, and the impact has been inspiring.
19. Similarly, our measures to enhance the participation of women
in governance and political leadership have borne impressive
results in the first instance. Again, as I pointed out yesterday,
the last election was a transformational watershed in the
women's movement for a greater say in our politics and
governance. Each elective category witnessed a surge in women
entrants as well as successful candidates. The most impressive
of these was in the number of counties which elected women to
lead as governors, which rose from 3 - Bomet, Kirinyaga and
Kitui - to 7: Kwale (Fatuma Achani), Machakos (Wavinya Ndeti),
Kirinyaga (Ann Waiguru), Embu (Cecily Mbarire), Meru (Kawira
Mwangaza), Nakuru (Susan Kihika) and Homa Bay (Gladys
Wanga).
20. The plan is to sustain this exponential leap in women's
participation, both in the number of leaders and the quality of
leadership and governance. For this reason, I have committed to
support measures to accelerate the growth of women’s
leadership and participation in elective positions through
proactive strategies at the political party level. In appointive
positions in the public sector, I have committed to raising the
number of women through greater vigilance and attention to
quotas in the ministries, departments and agencies of
government.
21. As pertains FGM and gender violence, I wholeheartedly support
the commitment to zero tolerance. This should not be a serious
discussion in 2024, and we should not be engaged in debates
about the need to treat women respectfully and with dignity.
There has been concern that, aside from these menaces,
gender-based violence has reached the level of femicide. This is
unacceptable. We should be evolving into a kinder, gentler, less
violent society, and not escalating into a cruel and violent one.
22. Let us all promote peaceful coexistence, effective
communication and the rejection of violence as a method of
resolving disagreements or pursuing objectives, whatever they
may be. We must embrace communication, tolerance and
respect for the dignity of every person and do our part, as men
and women, to prevent violence against women. We must live
up to the sacred commitment in the preamble of our Constitution
to nurture and protect the well-being of the individual, the
family, communities and the nation. For us, at this point in our
history as a nation, this must begin with visible actions to protect
the dignity, wellbeing and security of women, and to invest in
their effective inclusion in the economic transformation of Kenya.
Thank You