Additional information about gender quotas

The percentage of women is calculated from the current number of seats occupied in the parliament. The National Assembly has 350 statutory seats. The Senate has 68 statutory seats.

In 1997 a constitutional amendment was passed which allowed the President to appoint 12 nominated seats in parliament. Six of these seats had been reserved for women. A major constitutional reform process, which marked the adoption of the new Constitution in August 2010, mandated the establishment of the new, bicameral parliament, and provided for reserved seats for women and gender parity in candidate lists. In addition, the Political Parties Act 2011 provides financial incentives aiming to promote women’s political participation. In particular, a political party shall not be entitled to receive public funding if ‘more than two-thirds of its registered office bearers are of the same gender’. The Act also stipulates that public funding allocated to registered political parties shall be used for purposes compatible with democracy, including ‘promoting the representation in Parliament and in the county assemblies of women, persons with disabilities, youth, ethnic and other minorities and marginalized communities’.

The new constitutional provisions for gender equality in the electoral system were first implemented in the March 2013 general elections. Importantly, in the run up to the elections, the Attorney General of Kenya sought the opinion of the Supreme Court on the issue of the manner of applicability of the constitutional requirement of no less than two-thirds of one sex in the composition of any public body to these elections. In its ruling the Court favored the progressive implementation of this principle.