Kenyan universities are experiencing a significant increase in female enrollment in postgraduate programs, with women now outnumbering men in many evening classes and even some PhD fields.
At 8.30 pm, long after most office buildings have gone dark, a different kind of energy pulses through Kenya’s universities. Groups of women, some still in corporate attire, heels or doll shoes, others balancing motherhood and textbooks, are in lecture halls for evening classes.
Universities are reporting a steady surge in female enrollment in postgraduate programmes, and in some classrooms, women now outnumber men by a wide margin.
Linet Kemunto Omwenga is a lecturer at JKUAT who enrolled on a PhD course in Accounting in 2018.
Linet Kemunto, 32, who is doing her PhD in accounting, has witnessed this firsthand. When she began her Master’s degree in 2014, just months after completing her undergraduate studies, she found the lecture hall dominated by women juggling work, family, and ambition.
“In my Master’s class, out of six students, four were female,” she says.
Years later, as a PhD candidate, the pattern is the same. “We were five women out of the nine PhD students,” she tells Nation Lifestyle.
Linet made the bold move to enrol for a PhD in accounting in 2018. She admits the motivation was not just academic.
“Let’s be honest,” she chuckles. “The title ‘Dr’ carries some weight. I already had my CPA (Certified Public Accountant certification), but a doctorate opened doors and gave me credibility.”
Like many who have done postgraduate studies while working, Linet found herself caught between work commitments and academic demands. But these never dimmed her desire to do even more.
“When my classes moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic, it gave me flexibility to start doing corporate training,” she says.
Linet, now a part-time lecturer at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), says: “There were times I just wanted to quit,” referring especially to the dissertation stage. “It was tough. I felt like I was losing myself in all of it – school, work, deadlines. I had to be intentional about taking care of myself.”
That kind of burnout is not uncommon, particularly among professionals juggling demanding careers with equally intense personal and academic goals. What helped her, though, was her family.
“My family contributed financially when I was starting, but eventually I was able to sponsor myself,” she says.
Also, she notes, she had her employer’s backing.
“I know not everyone gets that privilege. Some workplaces can make it hard for employees to further their studies. I’ve been lucky.”
Despite the challenges, Linet is quick to encourage others to pursue their academic or personal development goals.
“The starting point is the tricky part, but don’t wait for everything to be perfect. Just start.”
To women planning on going back to school, her advice is to stop procrastination, a trap many fall into when thinking about going back to school or changing careers.
“Stop procrastinating. You will be amazed at what you can achieve once you start.”
Now, with her PhD journey still on, Linet is reflective but also proud.
“I almost forgot myself at some point, but I’m still here, still standing. I’m proud of how far I’ve come.”
One of four women
Ivy Joy Wangari is also pursuing a postgraduate degree. By day, Ivy leads a strategic division at a Nairobi-based fintech firm, managing high-stakes projects and cross-functional teams. By evening, she slips into the role of a postgraduate student, immersed in machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics lectures at the University of Nairobi.
She too found herself as a minority in the data science Master’s class.
“I was one of four women in a class of over 30,” she says. “The assumptions, the surprise at my presence in the class, it was noticeable. But I didn’t sign up for validation. I signed up to evolve.”
At home, she is a wife to a fellow professional, and a mother to two children, an eight-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son.
“I didn’t go back to school to tick a box,” Ivy says. “I went back for a Master’s degree because I saw the future and it is data-driven.”
Although her undergraduate degree was in business administration, her current role exposed her to technical teams building tools for financial modelling and customer analytics. She did not just want to understand the output; she wanted to understand the architecture.
“Data was becoming the language of decision-making, and I didn’t want to remain on the periphery, reliant on summaries. I wanted to read the raw code of the future, not just the footnotes,” she says.
Enrolling in a Master’s programme in Data Science was a brave decision, one that required altering both professional and personal schedules. It is also intellectually engaging, with having to learn statistics, programming, and machine learning.
The term “work-life balance” doesn’t quite capture Ivy’s world. “It’s more of a work-life symphony,” she says.
Her day starts early – preparing breakfast, reviewing client briefs over coffee, navigating Nairobi traffic, and clearing a full day’s work before heading to campus for evening classes.
Juggling school, work and family
At home, her partner plays an equally active role.
“My husband is my co-CEO at home,” she says. “We share the invisible workload—school runs, assignments, dentist appointments. He has never seen my ambition as a threat to our home, but as an extension of our shared values.”
The couple also leans on family support. Ivy’s retired mother has stepped in to help with childcare when both parents are stretched thin.
Her employer, too, has been helpful. “Corporate flexibility isn’t just a buzzword in our company,” she says. “My manager understood the academic journey I was taking. There’s accountability, yes, but also trust.”
Despite a strong support system, Ivy does not glamorise the journey.
“There was a moment last semester my son had a nasty flu, I was finishing a major product rollout at work, and I had a 20-page thesis paper due for submission,” she recalls. “For a moment, I thought maybe I should defer my studies.”
However, it was amid that confusion that her “why” became clear. Many women have abandoned postgraduate studies midway, not for lack of ability, but for lack of support from their loved ones.
“I’m not just doing this for career mobility. I’m doing it to normalise the presence of women in technical rooms. To show that motherhood isn’t a professional liability,” says Ivy, who understands the symbolic weight she carries.
“Sometimes it’s not even outright discrimination, it is the quiet surprise that you can speak ‘tech’. The assumption that you’re in marketing, not engineering. It gets old,” she says. “But that’s why I stay.”
Ivy has one more semester to go. This degree won’t be my last. I believe in lifelong learning, especially in a world evolving this fast. There’s power in staying curious,” she says.
Spot-check at universities
According to a data analysis of the University of Nairobi’s official enrollment records—retrieved from academic booklets published online as of May 15, 2025—for the 2023/2024 academic year, women made up the majority of PhD students in four out of 10 faculties. These included PhD programmes in agriculture, health sciences, built environment and design—fields that were once heavily male-dominated. In the 10 faculties, with a total of 9,089 students, there were more female students than male students. The male students represented 49 per cent, while female learners represented 51 per cent.
In the faculty of business management science, there were a total of 4,043 students, with female learners at 51 per cent. While in the health science department, there were a total of 1,339 students, of whom 47 per cent were male and 53 per cent were female. In the faculty of law, there were a total of 727 students, of whom 43 per cent were male, while 57 per cent were female.
However, more men took Master’s degrees in science and technology compared to women. The class had 374 students in total, where 59 per cent were male and 41 per cent were female.
For JKUAT, postgraduate numbers shared by the university’s corporate communications office showed more female students compared to male students. Last year showed 399 students graduated with Master’s degrees, with 194 being male and 204 being female; an increase from their June 2023 graduation, where females were 146 and males 199.
At the faculty of medicine, the number of females in the Master’s programme was 24 compared to males, who were 23.
Daystar University, through its Office of the Registrar, showed a similar trend.
For the past three years, Maurice Kioko said, there were 2,147 female students compared to 1,119 male students taking both their Master’s and PhD programmes.
My husband dropped and picked me up.
Experts point to several factors driving the growing presence of women in these postgraduate programmes. Social changes are also altering traditional gender roles, with more women balancing family responsibilities alongside professional ambitions.
Dorine Nanjala, a mother of one and an Economic Analyst, is currently enrolled at Kenyatta University doing her Master's in Economics.
As women take the lead in higher education, Doreen Nanjala, a 29-year-old mother of one, is among them. Doreen enrolled for her Master’s degree in economics at Kenyatta University in 2023. For her, the decision to go back to school was both strategic and personal.
“I was looking for greener pastures and wanted to add to my knowledge of economics, which I had studied during my undergraduate studies,” she says. “The job market isn’t so accommodating with just a degree anymore.”
Dorine echoes a common sentiment among many women, who are realising that advanced education is no longer optional but a necessity in a competitive corporate world.
While evening classes have been a game-changer for women juggling multiple roles, family, a full-time job, and the demands of coursework, the much-talked-about concept of balance often proves to be more myth than reality. Group discussions on weekends, long hours in the library, and past 9pm study sessions became part of her daily routine.
“Let’s just say there was nothing like balance,” she says. “When I had classes, the family side suffered a little, but later, everything settled. The key was to spend any free time I had with my family.”
She would squeeze in family moments during weekends, early mornings, or evenings, briefly, before rushing to class.
Just like Ivy, Dorine credits her husband for being her pillar throughout the journey.
“He’s very supportive. He dropped and picked me up almost every day in school and never complained, even when I was buried in books or group discussions.”
Finances were also a challenge because her baby is in school as well.
“But I love economics, and climbing up the career ladder is what drives me. Staying positive and knowing that if I don’t do it now, the time might never be right, that’s my motivation.”
The reading culture is significantly influenced by income, gender and age.
Workplace ready
From a human resource standpoint, the growing number of women in postgraduate programmes is not just a win for gender representation, it signals a deeper shift in workplace dynamics.
“What distinguishes these women is their drive,” said Alaly Zachary Sino, a human resource manager. “In a society where opportunities are scarce, these women are demonstrating that with perseverance and encouragement, anything is possible. When I see a woman who has taken evening classes, I see someone who is disciplined, resilient, and hungry for success,” he adds. “Those are the attributes we seek in workers.”
