Are you a woman? Prepare to pay more to make it in politics

What you need to know:

  • A week in politics can bring out the all the faces of a woman in ways that can be embarrassing and humiliating.
  • In Italy, a Senator has compared the first black cabinet minister to an orangutan – a species of great apes that walks the rain forests of Asia.

Kenyan politics are still in the Stone Age in regards to women, or perhaps it is the age of the dinosaurs.

The recently concluded matter of Kethi Kilonzo shows that any woman who wants to get into politics needs to be three times as smart, as cheap and as dirty as her opponents.

If you are not a registered voter, or have failed, neglected or forgotten to confirm any of the legal requirements you better be a magician with a very powerful chi to ensure that your name appears in the voters register, any voters register.

All other issues must also vanish into thin air before you declare your interest. You see my friend you are walking the road to hell either way.

There are many types of women in society. The brave, outstanding, resplendent, confused and many ordinary women.

A week in politics can bring out all the faces of a woman in ways that can be embarrassing and humiliating.

When it is politics, it is rarely in ways that are outstanding or resplendent.

One day Kethi was an ordinary woman, like the rest of us, making efforts in professional, family and business life, her contribution constituting a drop that makes the whole.

And that is more than can be expected of any member of society, given that that there are many wayward women and men bumming their way through life, making little contribution and learning nothing from their experience.

But since she declared her interest in the seat, we all know more than we should about her. First her voter registration became an issue.

To be fair, no adult person can claim they registered with expired documents and get away with it.

The IEBC may be accused of many ills but the registration of voters was conducted by young enthusiastic Kenyans, who first gave a voter a form to fill and then proceeded to update their records from the data held on the referendum or created a completely new voter data.

The confirmation card issued indicated the voter centre, the ward and the constituency, so not remembering any of this data suggests an onset of dementia.

But Kethi is not the first woman in Kenya who the public got to know much more than her potential as a leader and her ability to address the issues of the society in which she was looking of a political position.

Remember how Bishop Margaret Wanjiru got into politics. Many Kenyans could not remember which constituency she wanted to represented since the social space was full of all other manner of seemingly damaging information about her, the alleged father of her children and her aspiring husband.

The good bishop was brave and made it to parliament at the time. But women’s still have to pay a much higher social and professional prize to get into politics.

But it might be a somewhat universal way of looking at women in politics.

In Italy a Senator has compared the first black cabinet minister to an orangutan – a species of great apes that walks the rain forests of Asia.

The name orangutan means person of the forest. I am not convinced that it is an accident that this Minister happens to be a woman.

And it is very unclear to any scientist if the comparison in on social, mental or political abilities.