One day, six men and the life women live every day
A man takes care of his son in the absence of his wife. A simple role reversal exposes deep-rooted biases shaping opportunity, safety, voice, and dignity across Kenyan lives.
What you need to know:
- When gender roles reverse, familiar struggles sharpen, revealing uncomfortable truths about power, silence, and everyday inequality.
- Walking in women’s shoes, men confront invisible burdens long carried quietly in homes, workplaces, and communities.
Last weekend, a two-day gender training hosted by the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Centre, in partnership with the Africa Leadership and Dialogue Institute, left me staring at the ceiling long after the sessions ended. Not because the content was new, much of it was familiar territory, but because of a question that lingered.
The men in our lives – fathers, brothers, husbands, cousins, sons, nephews, colleagues and friends – love the women around them deeply. That is not in question. And yet those same women navigate these struggles every single day. Often in silence, in the same homes, same offices and same communities. It is a hard contradiction to sit with.
So, this week, rather than explain it, let us just follow the men.
Wafula wakes before dawn outside Kakamega. Water first, the nearest point is a 40-minute walk. He balances the jerrycan through the dark, returns to make porridge, finds uniforms for his children and nurses the baby. His wife left for a bull-fighting event an hour ago. At 6.30am, the children leave for school, five kilometres away. As they disappear down the path, Wafula notices his 15-year-old has not joined them. He is inside, quiet and withdrawn.
A neighbour has been coming around, talking about marriage, the boy pulled out of school, his future quietly decided by others over conversations he was not part of. Wafula wants to object. But in a meeting of village elders, his voice carries only as much weight as what he owns. He has farmed his father-in-law's land for 11 years. He owns nothing he can point to.
Across Nairobi, Kiplagat is presenting a quarterly review in his company's Upper Hill boardroom. He has been preparing for three weeks. Twelve minutes in, his phone vibrates. The nanny. Baraka, his youngest, has a fever. He steps out, briefly, he tells himself. He does not go back in. By the time he navigates Mombasa Road to the clinic in South B, the agenda has moved on.Someone texts: "The acting MD handled it well."
Kiplagat has noticed that his colleague, Janet, never gets these calls. He has also noticed that when the substantive MD position came up last year, Janet was shortlisted and he was not, despite 12 years at the company to her seven. HR called it a question of availability and focus. He has turned that word over in his mind many times since.
On the same day, the morning newspaper carries a story about Jared Kioko, appointed to lead a global body. The headline: ‘Mwende Kioko's husband gets global post.’ The kicker: ‘Father of three takes up a prestigious continental role.’ Kioko has a name. He has a PhD and 25 years in public service. His qualifications appear in paragraph six. His wife is in the second sentence. His children in the third. He screenshots it and sends it to no one, because he has learned that pointing these things out makes him difficult to work with.
Paul finished his hotel shift in Westlands at 11pm and took a matatu as far as it went. The remaining stretch he walked. Three men followed him from the stage. What happened next, he has not told anyone completely. When he went to Pangani Police Station the next morning, the officer looked him over slowly. “What were you wearing?” Then: “Ulikuwa unafanya nini barabarani usiku wa manane? (What were you doing on the streets at midnight?).” Paul never went back.
Mwangi has worked on a small parcel in Kirinyaga for 15 years, through drought, flood and falling market prices. The land is in his wife's uncle's name. When a county official came through with a title deed clinic, Mwangi's name was on no list. He once tried to get a bank loan to buy an irrigation pump. They asked what he owned. He went home and planted what the rain allowed.
Baraka, in Mombasa, posted a thread on X last October about land-grabbing in his ward. He woke to notifications he will not describe. His photograph had been shared in groups. A message told him precisely what would happen if he continued. He reported it. The platform responded nine days later. He has not posted since, and has grown quieter at community barazas too, which some of the older women have noted approvingly.
Somewhere in Kilifi, a Grade Seven boy has missed school for the fifth day. Not illness. The latrines have been broken since February, and he has no way to manage his period with any dignity. He sits at home and falls behind in ways that will take years to repair, if they are repaired at all.
Funny, is it not? Except it is not. Not even slightly.
These are not invented scenarios. They are real. The names have been changed, as has the gender. Everything else is exactly as it happens.
Ponder that.
