Why the European Union supports women in Kenya

International Women's Day is a key date in the calendar for the EU Delegation to Kenya. Women’s empowerment and gender equality are key values for the European Union. They're also closely related to other core EU values such as democracy, human rights and good governance.

Even within the EU, there's still much that needs to be done to achieve gender equality. For example, women in the EU still earn on average over 16 % less per hour than men. Women account for only about a quarter of board members in the EU's largest publicly listed companies. And in six EU countries less than 20% of members of the national parliaments are women.

But to the EU, gender equality is not just about fairness and justice in Europe – it's also needed to help ensure peace, security, development and economic prosperity all over the world. So, in Kenya and around the world, the EU is promoting gender equality and women's rights. We're supporting actions to protect girls’ and women’s physical and psychological integrity. We're promoting the economic and social empowerment of girls and women. And we're helping to strengthen girls’ and women’s voices and participation in public life.

Here in Kenya, the EU is providing billions of shillings of funding to support projects and programmes that empower women and promote gender equality in many ways:

• Two inter-related areas of activity are basic maternal and reproductive healthcare, and maternal and children's nutrition. EU funding for these areas amounts to more than €25 million – some 3 billion shillings – for around 20 projects, most of which focus on individual counties or deprived urban areas of Kenya. One example of these, to which the EU is contributing €0.8 million of funding, is the empowerment of civil society partners for the evolution of disability-friendly mother and child health services: this has enhanced the role of women in decision-making in the deprived Mathare district of Nairobi. The EU is also providing €19 million to UNICEF to help support the nutritional wellbeing of deprived children and women in Kenya.
• Women's political empowerment is supported through nearly €2 million of EU funding for four projects, which aim to enhance women's representation and participation in Kenya's political decision-making.
• The EU funds projects for economic empowerment of women in Kenya. Some €2.3 million is being used to promote livelihoods and inclusion of vulnerable women domestic workers and of women small-scale traders. The EU is also providing €5.5 million funding for "Women Increasing Sustainable Energy Access and Use" which covers Kenya as well as Sierra Leone and Uganda: it's designed to help women establish sustainable businesses by providing them with capital grants, technical and business training and linkage with business incubators in the sustainable energy sector.
• Some other EU-funded development work is not focused so directly on women but can play a crucial role in empowering them. Under infrastructure, the EU's €87 million funding for the Merille-Marsabit road in northern Kenya has cut the journey time from four days to about ten hours: in the government's video local resident Susan Aleya explains how this has transformed women's lives in the region. Under governance, the EU-funded €34 million Programme for Legal Empowerment and Aid Delivery, which will be launched tomorrow 9 March, should greatly improve women's access to legal aid in Kenya. And women are also major beneficiaries of support for agricultural and rural development in Kenya, for which the EU's current total funding for Kenya provides some €260 million.

Whilst today's an occasion for paying particular attention to women’s empowerment and gender equality, the EU is committed to these values throughout the year. Gender equality is about the realisation of human rights for all. And there's clear evidence that women’s empowerment is a major factor in making development socially, economically and ecologically sustainable.

In the meantime, the EU Delegation to Kenya wishes you a happy International Women's Day!