Women’s Movement and the Kenyan State

Womens faecal matter and the Kenyan StateThe Womens feat and the Kenyan State Cooperation or Conflict?Gloria Mmoji VulukuAbstractState preventive in Kenyas women attempt is inhibiting mature on women equality. This preventative has taken the form resources that countenance and determine their activities as well as laws that basically make women achievements dependent on authorities to achieve their objectives. The resulting scenario is an association ming conduct with women movements and the adduce that is more joint than conflictual. whence any meaningful revisions in sexual practice coituss ar essentially slow as counter transpose is achieved through with(predicate) constant computer address and compromise. These were the conclusions do after an examination of women organizations and policies on women in Kenya. The Kenyan organization aid womens organizations by availing miscellaneous resources, ilk direct funding and g everyplacenment offices through the 1/3 gender rule on normal offices. Data collected through an analysis of various womens programs show how this allows the government to settle the womens movement. In addition, data was collected on 10 women organizations amongst 2004-2014 predict a diverse and vibrant womens organisation that is on the decline. This is beca utilisation government policies curtail the development of women organizations into exuberant time professional organisations. Therefore, cooperation between the womens movement and the government is institutionalised, has led to electation, minimizing conflict and curtailing any meaningful change in gender relations in Kenya.Key Words Women Movement, State, Conflict, Cooperation, amicable movement.IntroductionState interpolation in Kenyas women movement is inhibiting progress on women equality. This intervention has taken the form of direct resources that aid and influence their activities as well as policies that essentially make women movements depend ent on government to achieve their objectives. The resulting scenario is an association between women movements and the put in that is more cooperative than conflictual. Hence any meaningful changes in gender relations are essentially slow as change is achieved through constant consultation and compromise. The Kenyan government aids womens organizations by availing various resources, alike direct funding through the UWEZO fund and government offices through the 1/3 gender rule on public offices. This allows the government to influence the womens movement. The resultant effect is the apparent decline in a once diverse and vibrant women movement. This can also be attributed to policies made especially in the last decade that curtail the development of women organizations into full time professional organisations. The policies grow made cooperation between the womens movement and the government institutionalised, minimizing conflict and curtailing any meaningful change in gender rel ations in Kenya. In this paper examine the effect state intervention has had on the womens movement in Kenya. How has government intervention contributed to the demobilization of the women movement? What are the effects of institutionalization of the Kenyan women movement? What take to be done for the women movement in Kenya to achieve meaningful fond changeequality? These are the fundamental questions that the paper tries to answer.Since the study of womens movements is premised within the wider field of neighborly movements, I start by critically analysing the definitions of movements. Emphasis here is on the definition of hearty movements as outback(a)rs with repute to conventional politics, and utilise unconventional or protest tactics (Diani, 1992). The logical argument here, and which runs throughout the paper, is that social movements are formed to meet undefined or unstructured situations and mostly use unconventional means to achieve their objectives alfresco instit utional channels. Once the state intervenes, most of these movements travel institutionalized, the tactics expire part of the conventional repertoire, large make senses of movement leaders co-opt and cooperation takes precedent over conflict. The resulting scenario is social change achieved through bargaining and compromise which is slow.Second, I show data from 2004 to 2014 supporting the argument that state intervention has led to the decline in the women movement in Kenya. Data bequeath show that the decline of the movement began the day Kenya declared victory against the repressive regime of its second president in 2003. Subsequent regimes have provided aid to womens organizations by availing various resources, like direct funding and government offices through the 1/3 gender rule on public offices. This section will show how this aid has contributed to the demobilization of the women movement in Kenya. The section goes further to show how policies formulated to enhance wome n equality have worked against the movement and in the process weakened it. I then play in a third section to a discussion of what require to be done for the women movement in Kenya to achieve meaningful social change, focusing on both the conditions that help foster movementslike use of unconventional means to achieve objectives and traditional factors that lead to the decline of a movement.Conceptualizing Movement-State InteractionTheory of social movement relies heavily on the premise of a dichotomy between social movements and the state. Early studies on the crush were based on the assumption that movements had limited access to institutional resources like the state and hence confrontational towards much(prenominal) institutions, with the state being its main target. Multiple definitions of social movements underscored this position with the main principles being their location outside the state (Gamson, 1990) and the target being the state (Tilly, 1978). However, in the last tercet decades, scholars of social movements have observed a move that has seen social movements get going more accommodating to the state, they have become institutionalized, tactics have become more routinized and have adopted cooperation rather than conflict in relation to the state (Costain Mcfarland, 1998 Giugni Passy, 1998 Meyer Tarrow, 1998 Mcadam, Tarrow, Tilly, 2001). Likewise, the state has become more accommodating to social movements (Banaszak, Beckwith, Rucht, 2003). This has led some scholars to term this association as conflictual cooperation (Giugni Passy, 1998), while others have introduced the notion of a social movements society (Meyer Tarrow, 1998). In fact, to some scholars, this increased institutionalization of movements and the consolidation of social movement ideas and the state could be seen as a achievement of social movements (Gamson, 1990).In the same line, there have been a number of works to show the mutual influences between social mo vements and the state. Topics such as framing protest issues (Gamson and Meyer 1996), repression (Kurzman, 1996 Rasler, 1996), movement outcomes (Dalton, 1995 Misztal and Jenkins, 1995) and most comm save political prospect structures (Kriesi,1995 McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996 Tarrow, 1996). The separation of movement politics from institutinalized politics was clearly illustrated in Tillys 1978 works where he presented social movements as challengers seeking to enter the institutinalized homo where there is routinized access to power. Gamson (1990) who saw movements as outsider groups whose challeges succeded as such groups became recognized actors in institutional politics. Therefore, students of social movements commonly associate institutinalization with demobilization, as social movements are necessarily extrainstitutional (Katzenstein, 1998). The integration of movement and state is seen as cooptation and a deradicalization process that equates to the end of protest politi cs.WomensMovements, andtheStateABlurredDivideBetweenProtestandInstitutionsIn the grad of the 1980s autonomous women movements started declining. States were displaying increasing openness to womens movements ideas and actors, a saucily vision of the relationship between womens movement and the state started to proliferate. Women movement scholars increasingly viewed the state as a possible and new flying field for women movement action. This was against the dominant viewpoint that women movement and the state had an irreduciblerelationship (Ferguson,1984). The viewpoint was loosely referred to as state feminist movement (Hernes,1987). Three approaches have been used to rationalize how and why the women movement and the state have increasingly interacted the femocraticapproach has associated state feminism with the presence of individual actors promoting gender equality within the bureaucracy, driving change from within the state. This approach argues that the state can empower women (Hernes, 1987) through thepresenceof women activists withinthestateandindividualadvocatesofwomensrightsworkingwithinthebureaucracy (Franzway,Court,Connell1989Eisenstein1990Sawer1990Watson1990Eisenstein1995aEisenstein1995b). However, the biggest reproach of the approach lays in the accountability notion. Indeed, whatistoguaranteethatoncetheyrisetopositionsofinfluenceandpower, women will remain true to the interests of the muddle of women? This is because working within state institutions itself imposes a number of constraints. The women activists within the state are first accountable to the government before the masses of women so as to maintain their position causing tension in the women movement.TheRNGSapproach, focuseson womens policy agencies as (potential)institutional relays of womens movements ideas and actors within the state. Inthisapproach, womenspolicyagenciesareatthecenteroftheattention,focusisplacedontheextenttowhichtheywillreflectwomenmovementdemandsandachievet heirintegrationintopublicpolicy (Revillard2006b).Themainissueaddressedbythisapproach to state feminism is whether or not public policies could integrate feminist perspectives and towhatextentwomenspolicybodieswereinstrumentaltotheprocess.TheRNGSresearchdesignproposed to study state feminismbycomparingtheeffectivenessofwomenspolicyagenciesinadvancingwomens movementsgoals in the policymaking processesofpostindustrialdemocracies(RNGS2006). Finally, the coalitionapproach, coalitions have drawn attention to the blurring boundary between social movements and the state with specific reference to the women movement (Mazur2002Stoffel2005Holli2008). There is consciously initiated cooperation by women groups tofurthertheiraimsorachievegoalsperceivedasimportant in a policy process (Holli,2008).The Kenyan Women Movement and the Kenyan StateThe Kenya womens movement has played a key employment as a change agent in respect to betterment of womens rights, gender equality, social justice and promo ting good governance in general. However, its impact has varied over time and in antithetical contexts. Hence I seek to locate the womens movement in Kenya during the different geological periods of Kenyas history while analysing its relation to the Kenyan state over these periods. The periods that have shaped the women movement in Kenya are the colonial period (before 1963) one party state (1969-1992) liberation movement (1992-2002) and, Kenyas renewal to democracy (1992-2002).After independence, between 1963 and 1992 there was little change in womens status and State support for womens empowerment initiatives was minimal at best. The government co-opted or controlled womens organizations, e.g. 1987 merger of MYWO with the ruling and only political party-KANU. The Kenyan state that was intolerant to such organizing, unless such a group condoned and promoted the oppressive political status quo (Nzomo, ). Capacity to organize and utilize politically was lacking. The only three na tional womens organizations allowed to function at the time, namely, Maendeleo ya Wanawake (MYWO), National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) and the Nairobi Business and Professional Womens organisation operated purely on governments terms they had to be non-political and non- partisan in all their actions and had to limit their womens agenda, strictly to social welfare provisioning, promoting the part of women as homemakers, mobilizing and organizing women at grassroots level into womens groups to support agendas of young-begetting(prenominal) political elites.The period after 1992 has been dubbed the Second Liberation in Kenyan politics, as it marked the return to political pluralism in Kenya and the beginning of scuttle up of political space for exercising basic and universally sure democratic freedoms.ReferencesBanaszak, L. A., Beckwith, K., Rucht, D. (2003). Womens movements facing the reconfigured state. New York Cambridge University Press.Costain, A. 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