Gender-Based Affirmative Action in the Security Sector: An Assessment of the Kenya National Police Service, 2010-2020

The concept of gender-based affirmative actions is applied in the security sector to integrate men’s and women’s experiences and concerns in designing, implementing, mentoring, and evaluating policies to ensure equality is perpetuated at all levels. This study argues that gendered affirmative action would increase the representation, promotions and recruitment of women into the security sector. The target population for this study included personnel at Kenya’s National Police Service, which consists of the Kenya Police Service, General Service Unit, Administration Police and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations. Furthermore, the study population incorporated the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) and other relevant agencies that monitor gender issues in Kenya, such as the National Gender and Equality Commission. The study was limited to the headquarters of the mentioned agencies in Nairobi. The study applied stratified random sampling and purposive sampling techniques. The study used both primary and secondary data, where semi-structured questionnaires was applied to collect the primary data. The collected quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented through frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Moreover, analysis of collected data indicates that various strategies have been leveraged by NPS to maximize gender-based affirmative action have been effective to a moderate extent, suggesting the need for more policy interventions. The study established that gender reforms in the NPS face a myriad of challenges that make it difficult for security sector reforms to achieve parity in relation to gender concerns, where these challenges include gender discrimination culture; nature of police work and attendant risks involved. Corruption, ethnic influence, lack of technical capacity, political influence, human rights violations, lack of transparency, financial constraints and insufficient resources are a big hindrance to the security sector reforms (SSR). The study recommends that policy interventions should be deepened by borrowing international best practices on gender-based affirmative action in addition to the use of specific policies that enhance integration of gender concerns into SSR to reflect the existing gender gaps so that targeted interventions only serve specific functions.