Women's Participation in Leadership: a Case Study of the Young Leadership Development Programme

Abstract

The study is aims at having a gender analysis of the people trained and the participation of young women in the leadership-training course, which is a programme of the Youth Agenda. The course is targeted to the youth at their various sectors ofleadership including student leaders, trade union leaders, young political leaders, community and civil society leaders, the young women leaders and the young professionals. It takes into cognizance the nature of the Kenyan Political setup, which is patriarchal in nature and argues with the theory that is difficult for the women to penetrate the leadership echelons even when given a chance. The methodology used to collect the data is secondary as the records of the young men and women who are trained are contained in a database at the Youth Agenda offices and the researcher used gender analysis to come up with the figures. , Some of the findings are that the women participants are not as many as the men and that they still shy away from attending the more "serious" leadership trainings like political and trade unions and tend to cluster in the community, professional and young women sectors.