State Department for Gender Affairs and Affirmative Action
For too long, Kenya’s economy has operated with one hand tied behind its back. We have systematically underutilised our most potent economic asset: our women.
While women form the backbone of our farms, our markets, and our families, they continue to face entrenched barriers that limit their full economic participation. This is not just a social injustice; it is a critical macroeconomic failure.
The World Bank estimates that gender inequality costs sub-Saharan Africa billions of dollars in lost productivity and growth annually. Kenya is no exception. We are simply leaving too much talent, innovation, and money on the table.
The Cabinet’s recent adoption of Kenya’s first National Policy on Women’s Economic Empowerment is a watershed moment. It moves us from ad-hoc, fragmented projects to a cohesive, whole-of-government approach to addressing barriers facing women’s productive economic participation.
The policy is not merely a “women’s issue”. It is a national economic blueprint for inclusive growth, poverty reduction, and achieving the aspirations of Vision 2030 and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda, including the President’s nine-point agenda on women.
So, why this policy, and why now? The answer is simple: necessity and opportunity. The necessity is etched into our current economic reality. Despite being the primary caregivers and agricultural producers, women face a web of constraints to optimal economic participation and productivity compared to men.
They are disproportionately represented in the informal economy, lacking social protection and job security. Women also have limited access to affordable capital, with a significant credit gap stifling the growth of female-owned nano, micro, small, and medium enterprises.
Further, women bear the burden of unpaid care and domestic work—estimated by UN Women to be billions of hours globally each day—which limits their time for productive work, including paid employment or education.
Globally, women spend 2.8 more hours than men on unpaid care and domestic work. These aren’t isolated challenges; they are interconnected barriers to economic opportunity that the policy addresses, from agriculture, manufacturing, trade and entrepreneurship, to the digital economy and unpaid care and domestic work, among others.
The opportunity, however, is even greater. By systematically dismantling these barriers, we unlock the immense, and currently constrained, potential of half our population.
The journey ahead is complex, but the direction is clear. This policy is our collective pledge to build a Kenya where a woman’s economic contributions and gains are limited only by her ambition, not by her gender.
The writer is a State Department for Gender Affairs and Affirmative Action Principal Secretary.
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