I've had a lot of responses to this tweet and I want to say a few things. One, you can read about the experiences of women trying to enter politics in Kenya in this free book that I co-edited with Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle. Seriously, it's free. https://ke.boell.org/en/2018/11/29/where-women-are-gender-2017-kenyan-elections https://twitter.com/Nanjala1/status/1300676813832761345

Two, here's an important thing: Kenya will not attain the 2/3 rule until political parties genuinely commit to stop SYSTEMATICALLY disenfranchising women at the nomination stage, and until that day we must keep the rule in its current form to force them to do so.

Kenyan women run for office. They stand up. They pay for their nomination forms. They campaign. They often win. And then your boys clubs meet at their country clubs and their local patriarch's home in the leafy suburbs, a couple thousand shillings exchange hands and boom

Nomination certificates disappear. Gangs are sent to intimidate women who speak out. Everything escalates and the party pressures the woman to stand down. Political parties happily take women's money knowing that the seat has already been guaranteed to someone else.

And because women already have relatively diminished political capital because of the pre-existing conditions of patriarchy - e.g. fewer financial resources, less access to violence as a tool for politics (it's the truth about our country), they often elect to stand down.

You can't vote for women if women's names don't appear on the ballot. In Kenya a lot of the mischief happens at the party level because most of our political parties are merely vehicles for patriarchal ambitions. There is no room in that ambition for women except as sidekicks.

It's getting worse. In 2017, we had 8 presidential candidates - zero women, even from minor parties. In the multiparty era, this only happened in 1992, and 2002 when the opposition fielded a single candidate. Women are the canary in the coal mine of a democracy in retreat.

And this situation is true both of the ruling party and the major opposition parties. It is rare (not impossible, but rare) for a party to put its political capital behind a woman who does not have significant social capital by virtue of her proximity to a powerful man.

Without a political party behind you how will you plan a rally, print teeshirts, pay for television or radio adverts? We spoke to women candidates who told us that even Christian and Muslim radio stations refused to give them free air time to speak about their campaigns.

So widows/daughters of powerful politicians have a better chance of scoring a nomination certificate than independent female politicians. (If you want to understand why marriage is such a big pressure point for women in Kenya, look at the political capital people get from it).

Anyway, we will not have an increase in women's participation until political parties decide to put their political capital behind women candidates, and until the nomination process within *all* parties becomes truly free and fair. But as we wait, keep the rule to force action.

Read the book. It's all in there.