A Kenyan woman casts her vote at a mock polling station during a pre-election exhibition in Nairobi, Kenya, June 12, 2017. © 2017 Reuters

Patriarchy falls particularly hard on women running for office in Turkana, Kenya’s largest and poorest county. Turkana has never elected a woman over a man in any position and 2017 may not be different. Even when women are running against each other for affirmative action seats they face obstacles that male candidates do not. Many of these incidents may not amount to criminal acts but they destabilize the momentum of women’s candidacy and infringe on their rights. Jecinta Abenyo, running for Women’s Representative at the National Assembly as an independent candidate in Turkana County, tells us about some of these challenges:

“The women’s representative position is very competitive. My relationship with the other candidates is not good. There are so many insults – it’s like we are all competing for the attention of the boss. We independent candidates get along better than the ones in parties but it’s still hard.

Married women always say, “I am a complete woman” when they are campaigning. I’m a single mother. They tell women not to vote for me because I am not married. They do this at the chama [round robin savings club] meetings. But usually someone will call me and tell me what is said because we all have our agents on the ground.

It doesn’t matter too much to me when they say things like this because so many women in Turkana are single mothers, and many are not single mothers by choice. So many of us are widows. Are you a widow by choice? Are you abandoned by choice? So why should a person who is coming to seek your vote despise you for being a single mother?

Women are despised in this patriarchal society. We are less competitive, especially against men. Even women voters still prefer to vote for men. If a man came into this women’s representative race, all the women would vote for him! Turkana has never elected a woman [over a man]. All the women are nominated and I don’t expect any of the women running against men to go through.

If you’re going into politics, get ready to be abused. Any position you vie for as a woman leads people to ask questions about your social life. Have you been drinking? Have you been smoking? But they never discuss the same of men.

A man is accepted the way he is as a leader, but when they meet with a woman they scrutinize her character”.