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Campaigning Against Threats, Obscurity, and StereotypesWhat's it like for a woman to run for parliament in Kenya?

By Alexandra Suich
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007, at 1:40 PM ET
Karambu Ringera campaigns in a rural area Click image to expand.

MERU, Kenya—Dr. Karambu Ringera braced herself as her campaign truck bounced across Meru's rutted roads. It was Dec. 22, the penultimate day for campaigning before Kenya's Dec. 27 national election, but she was calm as her vehicle battled the rocky ground. Music blared from the speakers anchored to the vehicle's hood, advertising her candidacy with a modern, clubby beat. A man from her campaign team, squeezed next to me in the cramped back seat, spoke into a microphone: "Vote Karambu! She has the highest record of development of all the candidates."

As her car plunged across the potholes and the speakers blasted her campaign song, onlookers waved. Some danced. Some glared. Others simply stared.

In Meru, as in much of Kenya, people are not used to seeing a woman run for parliament. Ringera's constituency, North Imenti—an area with lush fields, red soil, unpaved roads, and conspicuous poverty—has always had a man as its representative. This election is the first in Kenya's history in which a woman has fought to represent North Imenti, and this year, two of the 16 candidates are female.

Pressing the flesh; Ringera (right) on the campaign trail. Click image to expand.

Ringera, who has a Ph.D. in human communication from the University of Denver and is founder of a nonprofit called International Peace Initiatives, decided to run after she spent days trying to get in touch with her member of parliament last year. No one knew where he was. "It was my frustration and anger in looking for someone in authority that caused me to run for parliament," Ringera told me.

With a government notorious for corruption and inefficiency, the 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections have given Kenyans a chance to challenge the priorities of the current administration, which has failed to tackle the poverty, unemployment, and disease that most Kenyans face day to day.

In searching for a solution to the nation's problems, some Kenyans have turned their attention to an entire gender. This election, there are more female candidates than have ever run before in Kenya's history. With 269 female candidates, women make up just over 10 percent of all parliamentary aspirants. In a country in which only eight of the 210 elected MPs in the last parliament were women, the boom has elicited excitement and distress, depending on whom you ask.

Ringera has experienced both attitudes. Last week, after Ringera delivered a speech, a man emerged from the crowd and took the microphone. "I'm so happy to see a woman is running," he told the audience. "We have to vote for a woman. Women have kinder hearts." (Many voters, disillusioned by the inaction of the government under male leadership, are attracted to women's perceived compassion and concern for the community.)

But Ringera also sometimes faces hostility when she passes people on the street. Men will narrow their eyes and shout, "We can't be ruled by a woman!"

The problems women face in running for government in Kenya go beyond verbal abuse. The other female candidate running in Ringera's constituency, Flora Igoki Terah, was violently assaulted outside her home in September. One man strangled her and then beat her with an iron bar. Another tried to make her swallow feces while pulling out her hair. Terah offered money and her mobile phone, but they didn't stop. "As they were beating me they were warning me to leave politics and telling me that politics is for men," she told me.

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Alexandra Suich is a senior at Yale and former editor in chief of Yale's international affairs magazine, the Yale Globalist.
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