On 9 August 2013 Rachel Shebesh, a woman well known for her outspoken political style, and the newly appointed women’s representative for Nairobi marched to the offices of the Governor of Nairobi, Evans Kidero, to draw attention to the ongoing strike by Nairobi county employees protesting their unpaid salaries. In a video of the altercation that followed (that quickly went viral), Shebesh is seen to approach the office door of Kidero flanked by dozens of men assumed to be striking county workers, filling the vestibule to capacity. Kidero opens the door to his office to speak with Shebesh and, only moments into the exchange, Kidero slaps Shebesh across her face, apparently without provocation. She yells, ‘Kidero, you have slapped me! You have slapped me, Kidero!’ and she is then hustled out of the vestibule by several of her supporters.
Grounded in interviews I conducted in Nairobi and around Kisumu County, this paper examines the treatment and expectations of women elected to the position of Women Representatives under the 2010 Constitution. The provision was a radical attempt to address the massive disparities in men’s and women’s representation in public office in Kenya, and the reception of the treatment of Shebesh, initially by Evans Kidero, and then by the Kenyan popular discourse was well noted by women I interviewed. For these women, the violence Shebesh experienced, and the subsequent public derision to which she was subjected was very familiar to them. Instead of representing a new era in women’s representation promised by the new constitution, and its provisions for women’s empowerment, the ‘Shebesh incident’ demonstrated to grass roots Kenyan women that physical and symbolic violence women endure in Kenyan public life, and the ways this violence is condoned in popular discourse, continue to work to keep them out of political and public space.