Why there’s such little room for a woman’s mistakes

What you need to know:

  • Seven women die every day in Kenya in so-called backstreet abortions, according to Marie Stopes International. Shouldn’t the needless deaths of these women be our primary concern?

  • The sadder reality is that Ms Mwatha’s story is the one in seven stories that could also have remained untold as we continue to chase the rat, to use Chinua Achebe’s phrase, when the house is burning.

Dolly Parton sang about it but we’ve always known it — our mistakes are not worse than men’s just because we are women. In her song “Just Because I'm a Woman”, Ms Parton acknowledges the mistakes she’s made and beseeches her man, or whoever it was she was addressing, to listen and understand that her mistakes are not any worse because she is a woman.

PAINFUL DEATH

But the chorus of reactions on social media after the painful death of Caroline Mwatha, a human rights defender who worked with Dandora Community Justice, suggests most Kenyans are in disharmony with Ms Parton’s “gender equality in making mistakes” philosophy.

Police reports state she died of excessive bleeding from a ruptured uterus after a botched abortion. And that the infant was borne of an illicit affair with one Alexander Gikonya.

When Ms Mwatha was first reported missing on February 9, human rights groups, politicians and the social media brigade rose up in harmony in her defence, to demand action from the police in tracing her.

Human rights groups held a vigil in Ms Mwatha's honour as Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko offered a Sh300,000 reward for anyone with information about her whereabouts.

Kenyans on Twitter quickly descended upon the cause using the tool they best know: a FindCarolineMwatha hashtag that was kept alive with scathing accusations against the police for “trying to cover up” her death. I must admit I was one of the first people to reject police reports that Ms Mwatha had died after a botched abortion. I was not alone. Her family and some human rights defenders rejected this report too because, let’s face it, it's not as if the police have not given us reason to doubt their credibility in the past.

VILE COMMENTS

But the police and Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) were vindicated when an independent post-mortem examination commissioned by the family validated their initial abortion report.

That, and the overwhelming evidence from DCI detailing the graphic details of both the abortion and the illicit affair.

While there are still doubts in some quarters on the veracity of these reports, the fact remains she died in the hands of quacks. The tone of the choruses changed when the cause of her death was confirmed.

Humanity was quickly replaced by self-righteousness, which took the form of vile comments about her mistakes. Her marriage. Her affair. And the baby she was carrying. KOT and Facebook users weighed in on how a human rights defender could take another life. “What a hypocrite!” they cried. “We’re sorry police for asking you to find a murderer,” they added.

And my “favourite”: Caroline Mwatha died because of her “sins”. As if sin is what determined whether we lived or not.

Others have claimed if she were a man, the “toxic feminists” would already have a hashtag for him but this, as we know, is fake news.

'WILD OATS'

Ms Mwatha’s story is the story of many Kenyan women whose mistakes are judged in a harsher way than a man’s. There are countless men who have affairs every day in Kenya. Some proceed to father children outside their marriages too, but we do not condemn them. We embrace this as “sowing wild oats” but have no such kind phrase for women. As we continue to demand an angel of Ms Mwatha, as if she’s not human and therefore not prone to mistakes, as if her death lost its cruelty because she had an affair and procured an abortion which ended her life. Seven women die every day in Kenya in so-called backstreet abortions, according to Marie Stopes International.

Shouldn’t the needless deaths of these women be our primary concern? Abortion is illegal in Kenya unless the mother's life is in danger, but government statistics show over 400,000 abortions are carried out annually. So, why not do this safely? The sadder reality is that Ms Mwatha’s story is the one in seven stories that could also have remained untold as we continue to chase the rat, to use Chinua Achebe’s phrase, when the house is burning.

@FaithOneya