Her Dress, Her Choice

Gendered Citizenship

Where citizenship can be defined as the process of exercising rights and protections; and the expectation that specific obligations (by state or other parties) shall be fulfilled, it’s obvious that in Kenya, not all citizens are created equal. Despite the recent hue and cry over the “plight of the boy child”, it’s clear to even the most cursory observer, that women and girls constantly get the short end of the citizenship stick. National data on school attendance, political leadership, corporate leadership etc. all attest to the fact that it’s still easier for the man/boy to make his way in Kenya than for his female counterpart.

We see this differential quality of citizenship every day where e.g. assault of a male is seen as deserving a response by the authorities towards the perpetrator, but an assault of the female first requires a discussion on what the female was doing/ how she was dressed before she’s accorded the moral right to a response by the authorities towards the perpetrator. This is seen in all walks of life- from the humblest back street to parliament where the quality of female leadership and the regard it’s held in is still very, very degraded.  

Patriarchal Anxieties

It’s in this context where you find our female leaders are still not accorded the respect and rights that their male counterparts fully expect. It is in this toxic environment where Duale feels fully comfortable perpetrating what could be considered workplace harassment of female MPs. His attempt to dress his fellow female MPs echoes and validates the louts and criminals that were stripping and assaulting women who were “indecently dressed” not too long ago.

His patriarchal anxieties over fellow parliamentarians’ bodies are misplaced and particularly insidious as they try and limit female agency in the one place where we fully expect the full assertion of rights and expectation of equal treatment by and for all members of parliament. Make no mistake about it- this wasn’t an off the cuff remark by an avuncular MP who’s upset by the “tight” trousers that are being worn by his colleagues. On utterances, Foucault cautions that we should focus on the statement not just as a descriptive utterance, but as a discursive event.  Our clothing and dress is very much structured and shaped by power. A parliament that’s still largely in the control of men has dressing standards that are shaped, determined and dictated by men.  Where equally powerful women, and other marginalised populations are able to penetrate these spaces, they bring the potential to expand and de-familiarise the notions of what ‘acceptable’ dressing is. It is this discomfort with the shifting of boundaries that leads to these utterances by Duale and his ilk.

Break down that statement down, and you see it for the non-benign statement that it is.  It’s an argument that’s meant to discomfit fellow parliamentarians and reduce them to the sum part of their female bodies.  It serves as a reminder to female MPs that their bodies are under observation, and that the tightness of their trousers makes them even more observable. It seeks to rob them of agency over one of the most basic choices- that of how they dress. It deliberately seeks to disadvantage female MPs as once “tight trousers” are tabled as an acceptable point of order, it is but one more thing that the female MPs have to navigate in addition to the other more pressing and legitimate business that brought them to parliament.

Fear of a Female Planet

Duale’s problematic statements are but more of the same of what African women faced during and in post-colonial Kenya. The colonial encounter’s obsession with the black female body has been well documented where the clothing of Kenya was considered an integral part of ‘civilising’ Kenya. The colonial trope of the unclothed female body as unclean /unwell still persists in independent Kenya where post-colonial agents like Duale continue in this tradition of monitoring public exposure of female bodies.  

Women in Kenya occupy this paradoxical space where we’re both custodians of all that’s virtuous and decent, while still being morally polluting Jezebels (unless guided by men) - truly a Schrödinger's cat that’s simultaneously madonna and harlot. This fear of the ‘unclothed’ female form, the differently clothed female form is rooted in a fear of female sexuality and ultimately fear of female freedom.

It’s however a fear that has no space in a Kenya whose Constitution accords both men and women equal rights, and it especially has no fear in parliament where we fully expect grown women and men to do grown people’s business. If someone’s clothing offends Duale, he should simply avert his eyes. He has no absolutely no business in the ‘tight’ trousers of MPs.

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