Advocating for Gender data on Women in manufacturing, Gender-Responsive Budgeting and Gendered impact of Covid-19

The Kenyatta University Women’s Economic Empowerment Hub engaged the Western block counties of Vihiga, Busia, Kisii and Kisumu in a policy dialogue to discuss policy issue emanating from three studies conducted by  the Hub, namely: Effectiveness of Women-in-Manufacturing Program in promoting Economic Empowerment for women entrepreneurs in the Manufacturing Sector in Kenya, Gender-Responsive Budgeting: Tracking Budgets on Women Economic Empowerment Initiatives (WEEI) in Kenya, and Gendered Impacts of Kenya Government Policy Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The policy advocacy workshop held in Kisumu County, brought together Key stakeholders from the public and private sectors to deliberate on ways of translating policy recommendations to programmes and policies for Women’s economic empowerment at the county and national levels.

Key among the policy issues deliberated on were:

For the manufacturing sector:

• 1. Raise awareness of opportunities for women in manufacturing.
  2. Simplify business registration with a one-stop shop for women manufacturers
  3. Offer tax breaks and incentives for women-owned businesses.
  4. Address the issue of cross-county taxation.
  5. Advocate for women’s control over household assets and decision-making.

For the tourism sector:

1. Promote gender equity in tourism workplaces and policies.
2. Advocate for programs that empower women economically.
3. Include women in disaster and crisis management.
4. Develop guidelines for post-disaster recovery with a gender focus.
5. Review regulations to accommodate digital businesses without physical locations.

For the budgeting sector:

1. Establishment of a gender management database to be updated regularly and should include disaggregated data on women’s initiatives as a minimum standard. There should be a deliberate move to strengthen the capacity, to develop and use the national guidelines on collection, collation and analysis of sex disaggregated to inform women’s empowerment policies.
2. The existing legal and institutional framework is sufficient to promote gender responsive budgeting. However, there are implementation gaps across the budget cycle which need to be addressed.
3. The national governments should increase resources to WEE issues and in turn improve the welfare of women through increased income levels, giving them more entrepreneurial skills, and further enhance women’s decision-making and control over resources