Quantity Vs Quality is not the Issue

Reading through today’s Daily Nation newspaper, I came across an opinion article by Dr Joyce Nyairo on Women’s Representatives in relation to the Marriage Bill debate in the National Assembly last week. It was thought provoking but also irked me a bit...

Dr Nyairo was seemingly disappointed and frustrated with the lacklustre performance of women MPs present during the debate. Fair enough. I was equally disappointed in the seeming ‘lack of content’ in their submissions as well as display of seeming lack of strategy. It was similarly disappointing that nearly all the ‘seasoned’ women MPs were pitching camp in New York for the 58^th session of the United Nation Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Given the emerging gender dimensions since publication of the Bill, the women MPs surely needed to have been more strategic.

We parted ways at the point the article seemed positioned to argue on the value addition of women representation in parliament, particularly where the same is achieved through affirmative action. The first argument was that quantity does not always translate into quality. Absolutely true! However it is also true that this is not unique to women. The quality of submissions by the majority men MPs bear me out. Which begs the question…why is it that the debate on quantity versus quality always comes up in relation to women’s representation? Why is that we are wont to be rather quick to criticize women leaders for their supposed inadequacies yet don’t use similar parameters in relation to men leaders? Why the double standards?

Having more women in Parliament may not be directly proportional to better representation on women’s issues but the numbers do make a positive difference, no matter how small the difference may seem. The cited great contributions by great women MPs of yore such as Phoebe Asiyo, Eddah Gachukia, and Grace Onyango cannot be gainsaid. That notwithstanding, the small numbers of women MPs then could not have possibly been a strength to their causes. They may as well serve as classic examples of the difference it would make if we had many such women in Parliament.

The current crop of women MPs may be a very pale shadow of the likes of Phoebe Asiyo, Eddah Gachukia, Grace Onyango, Rose Waruhiu, Dr. Julia Ojiambo, Martha Karua, Njoki Ndungu. That notwithstanding it is insulting and demeaning to insinuate that current women MPs are subsequently not ‘self respecting women of substance and superior acumen’ or that they lack ‘good brains, focused attention and a public service mentality’. It is also in bad taste to speculate that their attendance of CSW may have been part of a strategy towards serving ‘dubious causes’.  

I also cannot fully reconcile myself with the generalized assertion that affirmative action embodied in the Women’s Representatives function ‘has become a site of tokenism’ that ‘breeds mediocrity and entitlement in equal measure’. There are countless positive results out of the agency of some women beneficiaries of Affirmative Action, just as there are countless ‘zero’ results from some other female as well as male beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. It would be unfair to use the latter group to rubbish all affirmative action.