Homa Bay Governor Cyprian Awiti says YES
Women are the backbone of our economy and they work so hard to feed the nation.
Both governments have a duty that for women to perform at their optimum, they must be in good health.
So when we employ them, we must make sure that they are given enough time to rest so that they can recover their lost strength through delivery.
There are considerable differences in women's and men's access to opportunities to exert power over economic structures.
Kenya begun to seriously implement structural adjustment programmes in 1994. The liberalisation of the economy has involved: transfer of government corporations to the private sector; the downsizing of the state through surrender of its social welfare responsibilities to the private sector; and promotion of civil society organisation (NGOs and CBOs) as contractors to the national state, international donor agencies and the market sector.
The structural adjustment programmes have had negative effects on the poor and vulnerable, particularly women and children.
Steps have thus been taken by the Kenyan government to alleviate this negative impact by designing strategies to promote women economic rights, enabling environment for women's equal access to resources, strengthening women's economic capacity, eliminating occupational segregation, promoting harmonisation of work and family responsibility for men and women and quantifying participation of women in the community.
Specific actions have been like advocating for gender sensitivity by creation of friendly environment for women through employment policies, amendment of laws, involvement of women in policy making among others.
Women constitute more than half of the population of Kenya and make a significant contribution to the development of the economy. For their potential to be harnessed, their role in economic development has to be addressed and emphasized. This includes giving them enough time to rest during child birth.
Mary Mwangi- MD, Double M Buses says NO
Women must be ready be involved in the business from the start and worked tirelessly to make it work.
I have run this business with my husband from the 1980s and some men saw it as queer for a woman to be out there manning a stage even at night.
But now I am running a company with a fleet of 200 buses alone since my husband passed on.
Although I am mother and grandmother, I could not be here if I took many months of maternity leave. I need a lot of time to manage my company. I have employed 250 employees of which 25 are women. I gave the female employees the three-month maternity leave as provided in the law. Making it six months will be disastrous to the employers.
Patience, desire for growth, financial discipline, hard work and family support has made me grow from the first car-the Toyota Saloon, bought in 1981 to a big company.
If Government wants to extend the maternity leave duration, then it should be willing to partner with the private sector to see how the sector will be assisted to address the absence of its employees.
