No safety in numbers: political representation and political violence targeting women in Kenya

ABSTRACT

Although quotas and other efforts to increase women’s political participation can ensure that the descriptive representation of women changes dramatically over a short period of time, it is not clear that social norms and political interests can shift as quickly as the distribution of legislative seats. Rather than being interpreted as a move toward a more pluralistic and representative form of government, the increased number of women in office may represent a threat to those who benefit from the status quo, and their resistance to losing their privilege may manifest in myriad forms of discrimination and violence. The relationship between political violence targeting women and increasing numbers of women in politics is often overlooked, despite the recognized potential for “backlash” against women’s empowerment initiatives. This article leverages data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) to explore the impact of increasing numbers of women in government on violence targeting women in Kenya. The findings show that rates of political violence targeting women have risen in tandem with the share of seats held by women in the lower chamber. That increasing women’s representation in political office may result in violent backlash against women generally should prompt greater attention from policymakers and academics to patriarchal resistance to women’s advancement.

KEYWORDS:

• Election violence
• gender quotas
• political violence
• women’s representation
• backlash

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Krook and Restrepo Sanín (2020) identify a much broader set of the forms of violence that female politicians face.

2 Restrepo Sanín (2020, 303) asserts that “despite sometimes occurring concurrently, violence against women in politics and backlash against progressive politics are two interrelated but distinct phenomena.” She argues that violence “is used to maintain the status quo of politics,” whereas backlash is “concerned with maintaining a particular social order centered on the heterosexual family as the basis of society.”

3 For a full definition of the measure, see IPU (2020b).

4 During the 2017 elections, women won three Senate seats and three governorships for the first time, indicating some encouraging trends.

5 The International Foundation for Electoral Systems understands “violence against women in elections” as manifesting as both physical violence (including sexual violence) as well as non-physical violence, such as online abuse over social media (IFES 2019). Again, “non-physical violence” falls outside the definition of political violence targeting women used here.

6 The data set that we are using states: “An ethnic group is considered politically relevant if at least one political organization has claimed to represent its interests at the national level or if its members are subjected to state-led political discrimination” (Vogt et al. 2015, 1329). This means both majority as well as minority ethnic groups, and discriminated as well as state-controlling groups, are included therein.

7 ACLED finds that the gender of victims of political violence is reported more consistently than other types of identities with less physical manifestations on which reporters might rely.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hilary Matfess

Hilary Matfess is an Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, USA. Her work focuses on gender, security, and governance. She is the author of Women and the War on Boko Haram (Zed Books, 2017).

Roudabeh Kishi

Roudabeh Kishi is Director of Research & Innovation at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Her work focuses on violence targeting women, far-right extremism, and data methodology and conflict research more broadly. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals as well as media outlets.

Marie E. Berry

Marie Berry is a feminist researcher and writer focused on violence, politics, and social movements. She is the author of War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia–Herzegovina (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, USA.