‘Women Are Not Ready to [Vote for] Their Own’: Remaking Democracy, Making Citizens After the 2007 Post-Election Violence in Kenya

Abstract

Following the announcement of disputed results of the December 2007 general election in Kenya, riots and inter-communal violence broke out across the country. The international community mobilised to repair the damage to Kenya’s democratic institutions, and to seek to provide some measure of accountability for the violence. The transitional justice model deployed in Kenya relied heavily on the development of a new Constitution, as a way to remake Kenya’s democratic institutions, and to provide mechanisms to address the gender imbalance in parliament, and government appointments. This chapter examines the 2010 Constitution, and its focus on women’s representation through the 2/3 Gender Principle, not only in the context of the post-election violence (PEV), and as a product of a liberal peacebuilding agenda; but against the local history of colonial and independence constitutional reform, and the history of Kenyan women’s political participation. I question the ability of the liberal peace framework, and human rights ideals more broadly, to challenge both Kenya’s patriarchal public life and Kenyan women’s own ambivalent relationships with their citizenship rights.