Gender Equality Leading Strengths

Political participation is said to be the key ingredient of every political system, be it traditional or modern, democratic or totalitarian. It means that in every political system there must be somebody in a position to take political decisions and perform other political actions like appointment and removal of officials from time to time. 

Factors like age, sex(gender), financial status, level of education, political and economic experience, psychology, geo-political zoning, primordial factors (religion, ethnicity), and nature of government, affect political participation.

In terms of women in politics, particularly, there are few occasions you would witness women participating in any political activity, especially during elections, few contest for political positions and very few women vote. Some factors that hinder women participation are further discussed below:

Education: Not all women have acquired adequate political education and so they know nothing or less about politics generally. Although the only specification given to those contesting for any political position at times is Secondary Certificate Examination, but not all women have acquired a political degree or political knowledge hence they are not conversant with the political orientation or structure to enable participation.

The Cultural Factor: This is a major factor because it is an ethos issue. In the traditional society, women are made to stay out of politics. With the only politics they can engage in being that of the kitchen. In a traditional society, it is believed to be the duty of the man, since he is the head, participating in politics automatically bequeaths one with power; It is generally accepted that only men be allowed to wield such political power.

The Psychological Factor: This factor hinders women participation in politics by implanting various reasons or motives in the mind on why women cannot participate fully in politics. For instance, a married woman with kids would be insulted even by her fellow women, if she attends political party meetings frequently and she is hardly at home to take care of her kids, especially if the meetings are held at night, a typical husband or man, would suspect her of having extra marital affairs since his wife would be coming back very late. This psychologically discourages women from participating in politics.

The Nature of Politics is said to be very violent and for those with the hearts and minds of stone, can withstand such violence. We have witnessed and heard about the violence that transpires every election season, a woman, naturally would not want to get involved in such as she has a lot to lose, health wise and beauty wise. If most women continue to think this way, there is no way any woman would want to participate in politics, or allow any family member of hers to participate.

Poverty and Dis-empowerment: In African Countries, we can conclude that the gender who is empowered is the man, some women are also empowered but cannot exceed the number of empowered men, and being empowered attracts authority, dominance, wealth, etc. With all these factors that the male specie possesses, there is a tendency of intimidation springing up, thereby leading to the laying back in political participation by the women.

FACTORS LARGELY CONTRIBUTING TO UNEMPLOYMENT IN KENYA

Majority of the unemployed in Kenya are the youth. There account for the biggest percentage of the job seekers in Kenya. This is a major drawback to the economy because the youth are the most productive members of the society. All this labor left out means less production and even more liabilities to the economy. Youth unemployment statistics in Kenya show that 60% of the Kenyan population is under the age of 30.  The Kenyan unemployment rate is approximately 40% as of December 2011 and that an estimated 64% of unemployed Kenyans are youth (Biko, 2012).

Unemployment in Kenya is a growing problem especially among the youth and has been the election agenda for almost every politician in the last few elections and still continues to be. It might not be possible to look at the solution available to the issue of unemployment without looking at the causes of the unemployment as this will give us a peek into what we are dealing with.

The following therefore are the most critical factors resulting to high unemployment rate in Kenya:

High Population Growth

Kenya’s population is growing at a very fast rate compared to the economy. There are more people than the current economy can sustain therefore the large number of unemployed persons in Kenya. Such a high population growth rate is incompatible with the available arable land in the rural areas. Hence people tend to migrate in the urban areas in search of jobs. This aggravates unemployment in the urban areas. This increased population coupled with unemployment really lowers the per capita income of the Kenyan economy.

Global Economic Recession
Recent global economic recessions have reduced the capacity of most economies to reduce unemployment. Kenya is not an exception to this. This increased recession has led to many companies lying off most of their employees to cut down on operational costs. The problem can be solved through greater international co-operation. Kenyan workers face massive lay-offs, no salary increments and a freeze on new jobs as companies struggle to survive in a bad economy. Many companies will pay out smaller dividends to shareholders and are rescheduling their debts to stay afloat. High cost of fuel and transport and poor road network are considered as the major factors responsible for the economic slow down.

Inappropriate Education System
The Kenyan education system has been very good in imparting knowledge to students for a long time. But the problem has come up whereby it has been seen to teach students how to pass exams and not how to become productive later on in their lives. This has had damaging effects on the students after completion of school. These students have few skills that they can apply in the job market and if they have, they are not appropriate for the kind of jobs they are looking for. The education system in Kenya was preparing people for jobs that were not there. The 8-4-4 systemof education is designed to try to overcome this problem. It is intended to make people self reliant. But it has a long way to go before it can really have an impact on the kind of labor it provides to the Kenyan market which of late has been an economy of job seekers.

Seasonal Jobs 

In Kenya, most of the jobs available are usually seasonal, there are there for a specific period of time. Demand for labor in rural areas is mostly seasonal. This is made worse by the general ignorance of the existence of jobs elsewhere as well as by occupational immobility. This creates problems of underemployment and disguised unemployment. Also some of the contractual jobs that come up especially for the manual laborers getting a job after that can take a while due to lack of any professional skills to back them up.

Capacity Under-utilization
Most firms tend to produce below their capacity, thereby not employing as many people as their capable of. This arises due to lack of sufficient demand of their products. It can also be as a result of monopoly practices that limit output. These companies don’t lack the ability to hire manpower but continue under utilization to save on the cost of production therefore increasing the level of unemployment in Kenya.

Imperfections in the Labors Market
There are imperfections in the labor market caused by government and trade union interventions. This has tended to distort the labor market by maintaining minimum wages above the market equilibrium. As such, the wage structure in Kenya has failed to coordinate demand and supply.

Use of inappropriate technology
For developing countries such as Kenya, this is the situation whereby industries continue using relatively capital intensive methods of production instead of labor intensive ones. This is caused by relative factor prices of capital and labor, foreign ownership of firms, etc. This problem can be solved by the creation of incentives to encourage the of labor intensive techniques.

Lack of Co-operand Factors
This is especially so in the case of capital and skilled labor, which are scarce in most developing countries. Such a problem can be solved through increased capital formation and expanded education and training.

Regional disparities in development
The disparities in rural and urban development have tended to encourage migration of labor to towns through what is refereed to as rural-urban migration and thereby a large number of the migrating communities may fall short of jobs as the industries in major towns may not be in a position to accommodate all the population and as a matter of facts, there are minimum opportunities than the rate at which rural-urban migration is rapidly emerging.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNEMPLOYMENT; CASE OF KENYA

Unemployment is universally recognized as a bad thing. While economists and academics make convincing arguments that there is a certain natural level of unemployment that cannot be erased, elevated unemployment imposes significant costs on the individual, the society and the country. Worse yet, most of the costs are of the dead loss variety where there are no offsetting gains to the costs that everyone must bear. (Depending on how it's measured, the unemployment rate is open to interpretation. 

The cost of unemployment can be seen in three levels

1. The Costs to the Individual
2. Costs to Society
3. Costs to the Country

The Costs to the Individual

The costs of unemployment to the individual are not hard to imagine. When a person loses his or her job, there is often an immediate impact to that person's standard of living. Prior to the Great Recession, the average savings rate in Kenya  had been drifting down towards zero (and sometimes below), and there are anecdotal reports that the average person is only a few weeks away from serious financial trouble without a paying job.

Even for those eligible for unemployment benefits and other forms of government assistance (like food assistance); it is often the case that these benefits replace 50% or less of their regular income. That means these people are consuming far less than usual. The economic consequences can go beyond just less consumption, though. Many people will turn to retirement savings in a pinch and draining these savings has long-term ramifications.
Prolonged unemployment can lead to an erosion of skills, basically robbing the economy of otherwise useful talents. At the same time, the experience of unemployment (either direct or indirect) can alter how workers plan for their futures - prolonged unemployment can lead to greater skepticism and pessimism about the value of education and training and lead to workers being less willing to invest in the long years of training some jobs require. On a similar note, the absence of income created by unemployment can force families to deny educational opportunities to their children and deprive the economy of those future skills.
Lastly, there are other costs to the individual. Studies have shown that prolonged unemployment harms the mental health of workers, and can actually worsen physical health and shorten life spans.

Costs to Society

The social costs of unemployment are difficult to calculate, but no less real. When unemployment becomes a pervasive problem, there are often increased calls for protectionism and severe restrictions on immigration. Protectionism can not only lead to destructive tit-for-tat retaliation among regions/countries, but reductions in trade harm the economic well-being of all trading partners.

Other social costs include how people interact with each other. Studies have shown that times of elevated unemployment often correlate both with less volunteerism and higher crime. Elevated crime makes sense because absent a wage-paying job people may turn to crime to meet their economic needs or simply to alleviate boredom. The volunteerism decline does not have an obvious explanation, but could perhaps be tied to the negative psychological impacts of being jobless or perhaps even resentment at those who do not have a job.

Costs to the Country

The economic costs of unemployment are probably more obvious when viewed through the lens of the national checkbook. Unemployment leads to higher payments from state and federal governments for unemployment benefits, food assistance, and Medicaid. At the same time, those governments are no longer collecting the same levels of income tax as before - forcing the government to borrow money (which defers the costs and impacts of unemployment into the future) or cut back on other spending (perhaps exacerbating the bad economic situation).

Unemployment is also a dangerous state for the Kenyan economy. A large number of economies produce goes to personal consumption and unemployed workers. Even those getting government supports cannot spend at prior levels. The production of those workers leaves the economy which reduces the GDP and moves the country away from the efficient allocation of its resources. It is also worth noting that companies pay a price for high unemployment as well. Unemployment benefits are financed largely by taxes assessed on businesses. When unemployment is high, states will often look to replenish their coffers by increasing their taxation on businesses - counter-intuitively discouraging companies from hiring more workers. Not only do companies face less demand for their products, it is also more expensive for them to retain or hire workers.

MEASURES NEEDED TO DEAL WITH UNEMPLOYMENT IN KENYA

The current Government should attribute on creating new jobs to ensure that there is improved economic conditions, increased access to affordable credit from banks, the Women Enterprise Fund and the Youth Development Fund, which aided in starting and expanding businesses thereby creating more jobs.

 

The following are some of the solutions and changes that should be directed to the country to improve the employment rate and they should be at both personal and Government level:

1. Change our education system

In the current education system, institutions teach our scholars that success is defined by the kind of employment they will land on after campus.So they will have to depend on someone to create that employment for them. Why not teach them to create employment for others?

The foundation laid for students toady, will determine the future of this nation. Higher learning institutions must teach students to be individuals, be different, inspire creativity, and engage them to work with their hands. Entrepreneurship should be a leading unit in all learning institutions, and as matter of courses, students should come up with their own business plans and business proposals while still in schools.

2. Change attitude towards various sectors

This calls for a change of attitude towards those who work in the informal sector, Jua Kali, who are currently the single largest employer. Yet we look upon the people who work in this sector as second rate citizens. It is a last resort for those who do not get absorbed by the white collar jobs or where we go after the corporate world has usurped our product years.

Voluntary work must be offered to keep unemployed citizens occupied. Furthermore, government must step in, to help people find other methods of catering for the needs fulfilled by employment.

Shouldn’t this be the first stop for majority of us, especially when you are young and are full of ideas that you can build on. We will have to learn to engage peoples’ gifting and turn them into a lucrative, income generating ventured. Otherwise we will remain a consumer country till we learn to nurture growth of small industries and stop importing everything.

3. Protect local industries

The country should stop importing everything, especially agricultural products. By supporting the local sectors such as the farmers, they will not only feed us but provides employment opportunities within his locality.Higher emphasis should be placed on promoting rural employment by providing support to cottage industries and agriculture.

4. Protect Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

The SME sector is the fastest growing sector of the economy and has enormous potential to create jobs. Surprisingly, of all the policy interventions proposed for 2011 no specific mention is made about giving direct support to SMEs to enable them grow and continue creating jobs to absorb the many unemployed youth churned out by our schools and educational institutions every year.

It is a recognized fact that SMEs play an important role in many developing economies, including Kenya. This is reflected in the areas in which banks — big and small — are opening up new branches lately. They are going to neighborhoods where SMEs thrive. There is clearly worthwhile economic activity in these locations, which were previously shunned.

The government should therefore ensure that these sectors enjoy a friendly environment in performing operations and policies such as taxation should be friendly as well.

5. Enhance income and productivity

Efforts to enhance income and productivity in Kenya’s informal work sector should be intensified. The Government should also facilitate better access to essentials of production like capital, land and enhanced training and technology to facilitate effective marketing of products.