NAIROBI, KENYA – Everlyne Chasia, 28, a mother of three, has been a housewife since she got married seven years ago. But now Chasia says she is breaking gender barriers by training to become a mechanic, a male-dominated profession here. Clad in blue overalls, flowered rubber boots and a blue cap, the beaming Chasia says she is here at the NCCK Buru Buru Garage in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, by choice and nothing can stop her from making a change in her life.
She says she decided to study to become a mechanic after suffering many financial challenges as a housewife. She says her family largely depended on the income of her husband, Lugard Lamadede, 32, who is also a mechanic but has little training.
“The daily meager wages that he makes cannot support us all, especially with basic family needs and children’s school fees,” she says.
Chasia is one of 30 women who enrolled last month in a class called Lady Mekanika, which means “mechanic” in Swahili. Project Africa, a local nongovernmental organization that aims to empower women and girls to be self-sufficient, launched this pioneer program last month to equip women ages 18 to 40 with skills that could help them earn a livelihood.
Chasia says it wasn’t easy convincing her husband that being trained to work as a mechanic could give her a chance to help him offset the family’s bills.
“He said I should look for a more ‘womanly’ job to do,” she says. “Hairdressing or being a vegetable vendor were some of his top suggestions.”
She says it was especially difficult for her husband’s relatives to accept her career choice. She says her mother-in-law even told her to choose between her family and a career.
“But I believed in myself, and I was prepared to forge on come what may,” she says.
Thanks to training programs and educational initiatives, women have been challenging gender barriers in the workplace in Kenya by entering professions traditionally reserved for men. But they say they still face challenges from their families, society and even other women, as many believe that women can and should perform only certain jobs. But in the Lady Mekanika program, women are encouraging other women to strive for financial independence and urge government and civil society to initiate campaigns to promote employment equality.
In Kenya and Africa as a whole, certain professions are still classified as masculine or feminine. In this region, mechanics, technicians, masons, public transportation drivers, and occupations involving science, technology and political leadership, among others, are considered masculine. On the other hand, feminine occupations typically include nurses, childcare workers, hair stylists, secretaries, administrative assistants and office receptionists.
This is despite the upsurge of women’s social movements in the 1970s and 1980s aimed at promoting gender equity in all paradigms of life, including occupation. Many of these movements arose after the Third Conference on Women that the United Nations held in Nairobi in 1985, but stigmas still surround certain professions.
Lindy Wafula, director and founder of Project Africa, says this is partly because of cultural beliefs that have socially divided gender roles in most African societies, something that might take a long time to erase. She says the Lady Mekanika training program aims to hasten the process.
“It is an opportunity to challenge female stereotypes in the society that are aimed at subjugating them,” Wafula says. “Again, in this era, self-reliance for women is the best option.”
She says she started the program to equip women with practical skills – regardless of their education level – so they could close the gender gap by venturing into a field that men traditionally dominated.
“I did not go beyond primary school level academically due to lack of fees,” says one trainee, Everlyne Wairimu.
But she says that the mechanic program targets both primary and high school dropouts as long as they show passion for the career.
“The selection criterion was largely based on passion for such a career because we understand working with tools has its own challenges,” Wafula says.
Women in Kenya have been striving to close the gender gap in other fields, too, thanks to increased exposure to traditionally male professions, education and affirmative action policies.
Charles Sikulu, public relations officer for the University of Nairobi, Kenya’s largest public university, says that more women have been enrolling at the diploma, bachelor’s and master’s levels in its traditionally male-dominated colleges in recent years.
“We aim to break these gender barriers and offer an opportunity to all students to take any courses irrespective of their gender,” he says.
He says that 223 women enrolled in the College of Architecture and Engineering for the 2010-2011 school year, compared with 201 women the previous school year. He says that the College of Biological and Physical Sciences also received 312 women this year, compared with 267 women last year. Male enrollment is still about triple that of the women in these programs, but Sikulu says the university plans to continue to reduce this gender disparity through its admissions process.
More women have also been getting involved in politics. Whereas only 44 women ran for parliamentary seats in the 2002 general elections, 269 women ran for seats in the most recent election in 2007, according to various reports. The current Kenyan Parliament has 22 female legislators – 16 elected and six nominated – out of a total of 224, making it 10-percent female, according to a gender audit study of the 10th Parliament by the Kenya chapter of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, an organization that promotes gender equality.
This is a 2-percent increase from the the previous Parliament, yet still falls below that of Kenya’s East African neighbors, such as Rwanda, where women make up more than half of Parliament. Recently, though, one female member of Parliament, Martha Karua, launched her presidential bid for the 2012 general elections.
At the edge of the garage, a female shoe shiner – usually a job done by males – smiles and waves at the mechanic trainees. On the public commuter bus, the bus tout in charge of collecting passengers’ fares, also usually done by men, is a woman, too.
“Pesa, pesa!” she shouts for the money.
The bus tout, Agnes Wanjiku, says she has to feign toughness on the job because some male commuters try to take advantage of her for being a woman by refusing to pay the fare.
“There are some who look at me in the emotional sense rather than professional,” she says.
She says that a social stigma surrounding being a bus tout also presents a challenge, but she and other women are determined to undo this.
“You see, touts are usually associated with drug addicts and alcoholics, but we want to bring a new face to it,” she says.
Wafula says that women face challenges from their families, too.
“We have cases of some women who ‘sneak’ to come for the training because their husbands and even mothers-in-law cannot allow them to attend classes,” Wafula says.
Wairimu, 27, a mother of two children, says she couldn’t continue with a life in which she felt like a prisoner. She says she told her husband she wanted to take a technical course, but he said no because it wasn’t feminine.
“‘How will the people think?’” she says, imitating her husband. “‘That I stay with a man in the house instead of a woman who will take care of my kids?’”
So Wairimu sneaks to attend the four-hour training with the rest of the team when her husband is away. Although she admits that balancing such a career and family might pose a challenge, she says it gives her passion to live life to the fullest again.
“Of course there is still a challenge of changing the societal attitudes regarding certain occupations that are considered ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine,’” Wafula says.
Edna Muli, 26, is the only female mechanic employed at the garage. Dressed in greasy dark blue overalls and her gloved hands filled with spanners, or wrenches, she says one of the greatest challenges that she faces is when clients – even female customers – doubt her ability to fix their cars.
“Most clients, especially women, prefer male mechanics against me because they think I do not have the ability and capacity to work on their cars,” she says as she bends down to fix a vehicle. “It is indeed true that women are their own enemies from what I have experienced so far.”
Muli says she has worked at this garage for two years but that customers still can’t get used to the idea that she can solve problems with their cars. A mother of one child, she says her decision to take up a career in mechanics was partly to challenge this notion that women are “weaklings.”
“At first, my husband, who is a cab driver, could not approve of it,” she says. “He wanted me to sit at home and ‘be a woman.’”
Jonathan Karanja, Muli’s coworker and mentor, says she has challenged this notion indeed. He praises her professionalism and discipline at work.
“She is committed to her work and has so far yielded good results,” he says. “The only setback is that some clients find it as a joke to imagine a woman fixing their vehicles. But it is something that Muli is determined to undo.”
He encourages other women who want to venture into the same field or any other field that has been traditionally male-dominated.
“The trick is to remain principled,” he says. “Women in such fields will meet men who will look at them as women and not as professional mechanics.”
Chasia says that there should be national campaigns to educate men that women can also prosper in these technical professions.
“It is not about gender, but skills and ability to do whatever pertains [to] the profession,” she says.
Muli agrees that the government and civil society should campaign to change societal attitudes toward women working untraditional jobs.
“Most of the clients regard me first as a woman before they consider my prowess in mechanics,” she says.
President Mwai Kibaki said during a speech on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day in March that the government supported the United Nations’ global theme for 2011: “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women.”
“My government is committed to gender parity and will continue to formulate the necessary legislations that guarantee women access to education, employment and positions of leadership,” he said.
If some changes are made, it is possible for Kenya to achieve goal three – to promote gender equality and empower women – of the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, a global U.N. initiative to achieve eight anti-poverty goals by 2015, according to the MDG Monitor.
Wanjiku says that having financial freedom as a woman in any occupation is the ultimate prerequisite for leading a fulfilling life.
“Having money as a woman is the only sure way to stand up to atrocities that women undergo, especially those who depend on their husbands fully for all their financial needs,” she says. “Women should stop being choosy with careers.”
