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Why aspiring female presidents must have 'rooms' of their own

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Azimio la Umoja Deputy Presidential candidate Martha Karua when she addressed the Jubilee Party National Delegates Convention in Nairobi's Ngong Racecourse on May 22, 2023. [Samson Wire, Standard]

English author Virginia Woolf argued in her 1929 book-length essay titled 'A Room of One's Own' that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to succeed in writing fiction.

During her time, fiction was a dominant mode through which elites could express and expose themselves to society-it had the influence that mass media and the internet have today. If Woolf were to write today about politics and gender, she would argue that women need financial independence and a private space to succeed in politics. Let us explore some background so that I can offer advice to any woman who aspires to be the first president of the Republic of Kenya.

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