KENYAN AND RWANDAN WOMEN LEARN POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT SKILLS
By Charles W. Corey, Washington, DC

Women's way of leading is more inclusive than men's, participant says

August 28, 2003 – (United States Department of State) "A woman's way of leading is different from that of men, it is much more inclusive, much more dependent on collaborating and networking," one of a small number of women members of parliament in Kenya, told the Washington File. Esther Keino, a graduate of Harvard University, was one of eight women leaders from Kenya and Rwanda who gathered on Maryland's Eastern Shore recently to learn key political leadership skills as well as how to train and empower other African women to use those skills when they return home.

Two of the eight women who attended the three-week seminar, which was sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), spoke with the Washington File about their experience. The seminar -- conducted by the Alva Consortium -- has as its slogan, "Global Change Through Education."

Keino, who is a member of Kenya's parliament and founder and former director of the Center for Women Studies and Gender Analysis at Egerton University, said the seminar has taught her and her fellow participants how to instruct and support other women to become politically and economically empowered.

"What helped me most was learning how to be assertive," she said when reviewing her days at the seminar, "how to speak up for what I believe in and just have the courage to speak up on the issues that mean a lot to me -- like gender equality," Keino explained.
Voicing one's opinion, she said, is "very important," especially on issues important to society.

"If you are not assertive, you might be reluctant to take a position on an important vote, and thus, as a lawmaker, you would not do justice to your constituents," she added. Keino is one of four women of 64 opposition members of Parliament from her Kenya African National Union Party (KANU).

"While the idea is for us -- the women -- to follow what the men do ahead of us, it is also up to us to take the idea another way -- to be more inclusive of both genders," she said.

In the entire parliament, she explained, there are only 18 women out of 222 members. "It is a very, very small minority," so it is essential that women lawmakers work effectively with their male counterparts.

Asked what special skills women bring to the political arena, Keino said, "Women will bring in issues that have not been highlighted before. They bring in issues important not only to themselves as women but they also bring in the issues of children and other marginalized groups because they understand marginalization, since as women, they have been marginalized."

In assessing the changes in her own approach to leadership following a week of meetings with top U.S. government officials and the two-week skills workshop at a conference center outside Washington, Keino said, "I look at things differently now.

"If I feel inadequate in certain areas, I now feel I can do something about it. I did not have skills to be a leader at the level that I am now, but I have learned that I can actually acquire those essential leadership skills through the ALVA Consortium."

Keino said she was raised in a very conservative environment for women and as such, "did not grow up learning these skills by design. So programs like the ALVA Consortium are very important to us to enable us to acquire what we have not learned."

Specifically, Keino said, the seminar focused on public, interpersonal and professional skills that help one attain positions of leadership, including: how to listen; how to express yourself and advocate a position; how to focus a campaign effectively; how to do interviews with the press; and how to influence other people to support you and your platform.

Those skills, important for a woman politician, are especially important in her case in the Kenya parliament, she said. "Most of the members of parliament are men and we need to enlist them as allies," she counseled. "Most of the gender bills that had been introduced over the years had been thrown out. Now, I think we have the skills to lobby the men to bring them over to our cause."

Another participant, Ambassador Joy Mukanyange from Rwanda, is director of her country's ministry of foreign affairs and cooperation, directing her nation's diplomatic and consular missions.

The goal of the ALVA Consortium, she told the Washington File, is the political empowerment of women: "to put more women into positions of leadership, to encourage more women to stand for elected office, and to train them in skills that will enable them to campaign
for and be elected to political positions. And, when they are elected, to have the skills to accomplish their duties effectively."

Asked if is difficult for women to be elected to political office in Rwanda, Mukanyange said, "We are lucky that the current administration is quite supportive of women's empowerment. This has been evident already in the government of national unity," she acknowledged, "with the appointments that were made, including women ministers and women as heads of parastatals, government organizations and banks.
"We have a woman as the vice president of our national bank; we have a woman who is the vice president of the Supreme Court. There has been political will to empower women in Rwanda," she said.

Additionally, she pointed out that there are guarantees for women in the Rwandan constitution. "But even with this," she cautioned, "all the problems that afflict women are not solved. It is still quite difficult for women in Africa and Rwanda in particular to get into political office for various reasons," she warned.

She cited lack of economic empowerment as a primary obstacle to the political advancement of women. "Women are the poorest of the poor," she explained. "In Rwanda, the events both during and after genocide have compounded the situation in which women live. We have many widows -- some of them who have been maimed -- and many children who are heads of households, or children raising family."

Cultural perceptions also inhibit women, she said. "There might be the political will at the top but there are still misconceptions and other cultural issues that stop women from achieving political office."

Many still think, she lamented, that "women are not supposed to be forthright and to speak in public. There are customs that keep women behind and the education system has not been helpful and supportive to women in the past."

It has long been held that women could only be educated as nurses, teachers and caregivers and that women were not good as leaders or scientists," she said to illustrate her point, and an assertive woman has also long been perceived as trying to be "too much like a man."
With the new forward looking political leadership and the skills taught in the ALVA Consortium, she said, she hopes women can truly become economically and politically empowered all across Africa.

The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200308290036.html