Kenya’s constitutional promise of gender equality remains largely unfulfilled, with women still underrepresented in public institutions 16 years after the two-thirds gender rule came into force.
Development Diaries reports that the High Court on 05 November, 2026, declined to certify as urgent a petition challenging the gender composition of President William Ruto’s cabinet.
Justice Patricia Nyaundi decided in a case filed on the second day of November by Eliud Karanja Matindi, DMagare Gikenyi Benjamin and Senator Okiya Omtatah, who want 25 members of the national executive stopped from performing their duties over alleged violations of Article 27(8) of the Constitution.
The judge directed the petitioners to serve the application on all respondents and interested parties by 09 November, with responses due within 14 days or by 24 November, whichever comes first.
The petitioners were also granted seven days after receiving the responses to file a supplementary affidavit, subject to a deadline of 02 December.
The court’s decision to allow all parties to respond is a procedural step, particularly given the consequences of suspending 25 senior government officials.
However, the petition brings renewed attention to a constitutional requirement that has remained largely unenforced since 2010, with 16 years of legal proceedings, parliamentary delays, and institutional inaction leaving the country with a gender equality provision that public institutions continue to disregard.
The two-thirds gender principle has faced repeated challenges, one of which was in 2012, when the Supreme Court issued an advisory opinion giving Parliament until August 2015 to enact legislation to implement the requirement.
Parliament failed to meet the deadline, with successive bills falling through for lack of quorum. In 2020, the Chief Justice advised the president to dissolve parliament over its continued non-compliance, but the advice was not acted upon.
The current petition shifts attention to the executive, where the president makes cabinet appointments and cannot blame parliamentary quorum failures for the composition of his nominees.
Article 27(8) requires that no more than two-thirds of members of elective or appointive bodies be of the same gender, while Article 10 makes equality and non-discrimination binding national values, just as Article 232 requires public service recruitment to provide adequate and equal opportunities for appointment.
The problem is therefore the failure to enforce constitutional standards.
The composition of the cabinet has consequences beyond the number of women around the table, with cabinet secretaries influencing decisions on health budgets, maternal health services, rural water supply, school infrastructure and land administration.
These decisions affect whether women can access healthcare, how far they travel to fetch water and whether girls have adequate sanitation facilities to remain in school during menstruation.
Rural women are particularly affected when national policies overlook the infrastructure their communities depend on, including water points, maternity waiting homes and roads linking rural settlements to referral facilities.
And for women with disabilities, they face another layer of exclusion. Article 54(2) of the constitution requires at least five percent of members of public bodies to be persons with disabilities, giving institutions an additional representation obligation that should be monitored alongside the gender rule.
Women’s rights organisations, county assembly women’s caucuses and citizens should follow the petition and seek to participate as interested parties or through appropriate submissions within the court’s timelines.
They can extend this scrutiny to their county executive committees by examining their composition against Articles 27(8) and 54(2), publishing their findings and submitting them to their county assemblies.
At the national level, the Office of the Attorney General should disclose the constitutional compliance assessments conducted before the contested appointments, while the National Assembly should introduce a standing order requiring gender and disability representation thresholds to be met before approving executive appointments.
The National Gender and Equality Commission should reinforce this oversight by publishing quarterly reports identifying national and county appointive bodies that fail to meet these requirements.
Kenya’s constitution has set the standard for gender representation since 2010. The President, Parliament and other public institutions must now demonstrate that the requirement applies to those who exercise power, as much as it protects those who live with the consequences of their decisions.
