It takes progressive laws to bring desired social change

A Senegalese immigration officer confronted my Kenyan female colleague with a very strange question this week: “Do you have permission in writing from your husband or father to travel?” Suffice to say that line of enquiry was very quickly dismissed. She entered the country to run a Pan-African conference for sixty men and women. I was left wondering how far Kenya has come to not allow one’s sex or gender to constrain one’s freedom to speak, act and be ourselves.

While we were in Senegal, the Kenyan Gender Ministry launched an excellent book on the nation’s trailblazers. Kenyan women trailblazers knocked down walls to create all the opportunities we now take for granted. It is their vision, sacrifices and impact that UN Women and World Bank now measures.