Kenya: Gender responsive budgeting kicks in

For the first time ever, the Kenyan finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars, about 3.6 per cent of the primary education budget, to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls. This comes after persistent pressure from women parliamentarians who took the issue of girls’ absenteeism from school, due to lack of sanitary pads, to parliament. It was a campaign that left their male counterparts speechless, for such matters are rarely spoken about in public, let alone in parliament, in Kenya’s conservative society.