‘You can’t do politics without money’: female politicians, matronage, and the limits of gender quotas in Kenya

Abstract

AbstractIn 2010, Kenya introduced a gender quota to boost women’s political representation. The quota mandated that a single gender should not hold more than two-thirds of elective and appointive positions in public bodies. When few women won seats in elections in 2013 and 2017, political parties fulfilled the gender quota by nominating hundreds of women as members of county assemblies (MCAs). Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2019 in one of Kenya’s county assemblies, this article shows how nominated female MCAs participate in transactional relationships with the public. Like male politicians, they are often called on to contribute to fundraisers and to meet the needs of constituents. Female politicians also accompany their giving with political rhetoric in support of female leadership. I argue that, through their giving, female politicians use money as a tool to champion women’s political leadership. Their matronage – a term I use in lieu of patronage to emphasize the role of women in transactional relationships – ultimately shows how gender quota legislation can go only so far in increasing women’s political representation. Instead, political actors also rely on informal mechanisms in order to achieve gender equality in politics.