If we’re to develop rural areas, consider women for governors

There are few things economists agree about, partly because the field is not a pure science and, therefore, there is a lot of guesswork involved.

One of the biggest debates in Africa, crudely put, boils down to this: What should governments prioritise? Should they focus above all else on the hard infrastructure that might spur growth, build mega railways and ports and six lane highways and leave the rest to business?

Or should they instead invest first in the softer imperatives; spend big sums on the healthcare system to yield a healthy population, invest massively in education and also focus on small traders rather than big business by putting in a lot of money into agriculture, which is the sector that employs the vast majority? The correct answer, of course, is that policymakers should find a way to do both. The problem is that many African governments, with Kenya being a prominent example, are throwing too much energy in working on hard infrastructure, geothermal plants, highways and such but not enough in the softer category.

My colleague Otieno Otieno shared an interesting theory he picked up at a symposium where some prominent female leaders spoke.

The answer, they said, was to rotate the presidency between men and women for obvious reasons.

Men are hardwired to aim for mega infrastructure projects that are highly visible and which can offer a concrete example of achievement.

PARTICIPATORY STYLE

Women are more likely to focus on the wellbeing of society and will worry as much about whether people have mosquito nets over their heads, whether there is medicine in all rural dispensaries and whether children have, not laptops, but a balanced meal at lunch time in their schools.
There is a considerable body of research to show these are not just stereotypes.

The American Psychological Association reports that women tend to have a more cooperative, participatory style of leading while men prefer a “command and control style”.

Two American scholars, Francesca Gino and Alison Wood Brooks, interviewed dozens of employed individuals and found that women and men expressed very different career goals.

Their study reinforced existing research that concluded men are more likely than women to engage in dominant or aggressive behaviours, to initiate negotiations, and to self-select into competitive environments — behaviours likely to facilitate professional advancement.

Women, on the other hand, were not willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of power alone. While men saw power as a goal they would go to most lengths to achieve, women saw promotion as an attainable but not overwhelmingly desirable goal in itself.

Research therefore suggests that we might benefit considerably by giving women greater positions of power in the national government. The reality, though, is there are no plausible paths to victory for a female presidential candidate as things stand.

So why not go for something more realistic — why not vote in as many female governors as possible?

The counties are designed, above all, to handle many of the soft but extremely important activities, that the national government has neglected for a long time.

BUILDING RURAL ROADS

The Constitution gives county leadership authority over agriculture, county health services and early education.

The problem is that 47 out of the 47 governors are men. And they seem to have pumped all their resources, like the national government, into just one of their other roles — building rural roads and taking care of street lighting.

That’s probably why our doctors and nurses are always on strike because the governors don’t see the crucial services they provide as being a priority area of expenditure and they prefer to put money into concrete and mortar projects (which also provide an easier avenue for quick kickbacks from contractors).

The only governor who seems to be heavily investing in the softer, less visible aspects of development, is Kivutha Kibwana who has proposed a free healthcare model for Makueni and has also put a lot of money into water projects.

Several governors in northern Kenya, too, have invested wisely in areas such as maternal healthcare while many of the rest are busy building substandard roads and stadia.

Now that we evidently will not get a female president any time soon, voters might be well advised to try their luck with female governors.

It is encouraging a few strong candidates have shown up across the country, from Charity Ngilu to Cecily Mbarire, Wavinya Ndeti and Joyce Laboso.

Let’s hope some of them win their bids for governor, and then, at last, we can see whether voters will draw the benefits that the theories suggest they would.

[email protected] @mutigam