Possibilities of New Approaches to Gender, Security and Constitutionalism: A Living Gender Probe into Kenyan National Security Architecture in the Constitution

Abstract

This paper situates itself within existing feminist constitutionalism analyses by noting that constitutions and constitutional processes are gendered and that constitutional norms may have different consequences for different genders. However, it attempts to extend these existing theories to interrogate how, if at all, feminist constitutional approaches may make credible interventions into the national security architecture given in the constitution. To this end, this paper proposes ‘living gender’ as a model of analysis. This model requires a deliberate inclusion of gender in the architectural design of constitutional institutions, which in this case, is the Kenyan National Security Framework. As with most feminist approaches, living gender is sceptical of rights-based clauses on equality and non-discrimination that do not interrogate the underlying masculine structures of constitutions. In this paper, I propose a three-pronged approach, including, ontological, locus and content concerns. To test this model, this paper uses the national security architecture in the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 as a case study.