Gender disparities in Kenyan education

In Kenya, gender disparities in education may be created or perpetuated by policy, ethnicity, region, religion, and age.

UNICEF reports that the greatest gender disparity exists among the poorest quintile group of Kenya, with attendance rates being 33.1% and 25% for males and females respectively.

[7] Regional differentiation has been linked to uneven capitalist development that occurred in Kenya in the first half of the twentieth century.

The tribes that were penetrated most deeply by the initial missionary spring in the 1920s were the Luo, Luhya, Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, and Kamba.

Other tribes like the Kalenjin, who lived in the Rift valley, previously mentioned to have had less missionary presence, were slower to jump onto the Western education bandwagon because of their regional disadvantage.

The spreading of education in Kenya was a political one as all tribes initially resisted the presence of missionary force until they realized the socio-economic benefits.

It seems that as missionary presence intensified in an area, more initial protest and subsequent acceptance of Western education and tribal advancement happened.

In regions that took longer to assimilate into Western countries and benefit from advanced schooling systems, the girls experienced greater education inequality.

Kikuyu, Luo and other groups have benefited from this early educational influence experience greater academic achievement and female enrollment in the long term than in other tribes.

[8] The Kenyan government has also poured vast amounts of resources into educating the population, including introducing universal primary schooling.

Because women are more likely to invest their resources into their children's education, the traditional practice of males controlling cash crops poses a significant concern for gender disparities in Kenya.

[10] Educated women may be viewed by their tribes, family members and greater society as "worldly", a definition that often comes with associated connotations like disrespectful, arrogant, or even promiscuous.

Women and children make up most of these households in rural areas, where fathers may be absent for long periods of time.

[13] In 2017, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta mandated the government to provide pubescent girls with sanitary towels free of charge in public schools.

[15][16][17] In 2016, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted US$2.6 million to Zanaa Africa to study the efficacy of sanitary pads and reproductive health education on the quality of life of female Kenyan teens.

[1] For this to happen, supplementary laws, including those that protect maternity leave, equal pay, and discrimination in the workplace, may have to be implemented.

[1] Rural areas and the specific ethnic groups they compose suffer from disproportionately low resources in education and receive significantly less funds from the government.