Women are slowly catching up with men in labour force participation as more employers embraced gender parity policies, closing the gap between male and female workers.
In Kenya’s modern sector which employed slightly over three million workers by last year, a jobs analysis shows that women participation rose to 38.3 percent of the workforce, from 35.9 percent in 2013.
Women further took nearly half, 48.45 percent, of all the jobs created over the past decade, closing in on breaking even in labour force participation with their men counterparts. A total of 1,101,500 jobs were created from 2013 to 2022, out of which female jobs were 533,700.
In four of the 10 years, more female than male jobs were created and even in 2020 when Kenya’s employment sector witnessed a massive loss of jobs as companies struggled, fewer women lost jobs as compared to men.
For every woman who lost a job in 2020, five men lost. Over the decade, only 69,300 female jobs have been lost, compared to 165,800 male jobs.
The trend has seen more women enter Kenya’s formal labour market, mainly in the construction, education, and agriculture sectors.
The number of female workers in Kenya’s agriculture sector has grown by 25.9 percent over the past decade, from 128,900 workers in 2013 to 162,100 workers last year.
In the education sector, it grew by more than two-thirds, from 168,400 to 285,900. And in the formerly male-dominated construction sector, women have come out quite aggressively over the past decade, their numbers more than tripling from 23,600 only to 75,900.
More sectors continue to embrace the employment of more women in their workforce, with a target to employ 50:50 across genders.
“We have 51 percent of our staff as women. That is something that we talk about because we are proud that we are playing a role in that,” says Mr John Gachora, the NCBA Bank CEO.
Within the financial and insurance sector, the Economic Survey 2023, stated female workers have grown by 24 percent, as male workers grew by 18.8 percent since 2013.
More companies continue to embrace drives to grow female workers within their workspaces. The East African Breweries (EABL), for instance, says in its 2022 annual report that women constituted 26 percent of its workforce, while national carrier, Kenya Airways, says the proportion of female workers within its 3,544 workforce was 40 percent in 2020 and 2021- the latest available data.
“We continue to drive inclusion and diversity in our business. Through a deliberate focus on this initiative, we have improved our gender diversity, hitting a 26 percent women employees’ ratio in financial year 2022, up from 17 percent previously, with an ambition to arrive at an equal split in 2030,” the company says.
At the electricity generation company, KenGen, the proportion of female workers was 36 percent by last year, equivalent to four female workers in a group of seven male workers.
World Bank data on labour participation in Kenya by gender- looking at the proportion of persons among either gender actively engaged in labour within a group- show that the proportion of men has fallen faster than women, between 2010 and 2021.
“In 2021, the male labor force participation rate in Kenya was measured at 75.6 percent. This meant that nearly 77 in every 100 men aged 15-64 years were economically active. Among females, the rate was lower, at 71 percent,” the World Bank says.
The portion of males in labour force fell from 76.4 percent in 2010, while that of females fell slightly from 71.1 percent the same year.
