I make no spurious claims to speaking on behalf of Kenyan feminism as a whole. I can barely lay claim to speaking about the perception of Kenyan feminism in my generation-- women in their mid 20s. So. I speak only for myself, and (if they'll permit me to quote them) the fabulous group of women I am privileged to call my friends.

Disclaimer duly made.

I never know what to make of the gender issue in Kenya. I had the gross misfortune of attending the now infamous 'The Kenya We Want' conference last week. Which is to say that I went to one session and expended so much energy sighing and rolling my eyes that I frankly considered it a better use of my time to go elsewhere and while away my day on Facebook. Or twiddle my thumbs. Or count matatus on Ngong Road. Anything else, really. That there were some valid points made by the speakers is not in question. I take umbrage with the fact that we needed 3 days and millions of shillings to tell us what we all already know.

But, I digress. I'm always fascinated by question time in public forums, particularly where the public involves 'representatives from the grassroots'. There are certain pat questions that, without fail, shall be asked, it's almost like reading from a script. One of those token questions is the gender one; it will inevitably be asked by virtually every single woman who receives the microphone. And when we say 'gender', you'd better be sure that we're talking about women. EVERY SINGLE WOMAN without exception at the Kenya We Want conference stood up to address the issue of gender. Wait -- I think I lie -- one woman did stand up to say that she didn't want special tribunals and she wanted the Hague, but she wanted special tribunals and she didn't want the Hague. Yeah. Figure that one out yourself.

Now, to be clear, I'm all for women's rights. I've often said that over half of Barack Obama's appeal is Michelle -- anyone who found a woman that amazing must have some judgment worth believing in. On certain days of the week I even call myself a feminist. But what happened to the concept of crosscutting identities? To quote Amartya Sen,

Despite the immensity of the vision implicit in the laudable task of 'situating a person in the society', the translation of that vision into actual application has often taken the form of neglecting the relevance of the person's plural social relations, seriously underestimating the richness of the multiple features of her 'social situation'. The underlying vision sees humanity in a dramatically reduced form.

We Kenyans reduce ourselves over and over again. We fail to see past our gender, past our socioeconomic groups, and, most pervasively and destructively, past our ethnicity. The women at the conference and their myopic view of the world were representative of the plague that infects us all: our inability to get beyond reducing ourselves. And so we'll have more conferences, and new women will stand up and ask the exact same questions that were asked from time immemorial, and the answers/issues will remain the same. We will continue to lack sufficient female representation in parliament because the campaigns and subsequent voting patterns will remain the same.

Here's to 2012 elections, and Vision 2050.

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