In my research, I found worse in China. There was the one-child policy, first outlined by Deng Xiaoping in a 1979 speech and implemented nationally in 1981. A woman could only bear a second child after four years of the first. Further, all women with three or more children by November 1, 1979 were to be sterilised. 

More disgustingly, the directive enforced abortion. Those who became pregnant out of wedlock, or below legal marriage age had to undergo remedial operations (abortion) within the prescribed period. 

In A Mother's Ordeal, Steven W. Mosher presents a nightmarish view of Chinese practices under the one-family, one-child policy. One female journalist was quoted as saying: "There were hundreds of women, some more than six months pregnant, packed in dark corridors and makeshift tents, waiting to be operated on in the abortion centre in the hospital's courtyard. Next to it was a toilet filled with blood-soaked toilet papers. Behind toilets stood a line of waste bins: the aborted babies." 

That was China of early 1980s. It's now home to a quarter of the earth's population but women have long extricated themselves from such diabolic eccentricities.

In the United States feminist movements gathered storm in the 1970s. Women have since made major leaps. In some quarters, however, their contribution earned them not thanks but undiluted contempt. Women Respond to Men's Movement, a feminist collection edited by Kay Leigh Hagan has much to say on this. One survey carried out in mid-1990s showed that 51 per cent of college men would rape if they could get away with it. 

It also revealed that the single most common occasion for female homicide is not robbery, gang, or drug but a squabble with a man. Where does this leave Kenyan women? The Chinese experience teaches them virtually everything is achievable and that others have seen it all. The American, that this struggle is far from over and all is not well everywhere. 

Women must now lobby against motions like legalising abortion. Pigeonholed ones like the Domestic Violence (family protection) Bill and the National Commission on Gender and Development Bill all depend on women's lobby. For socio-economic and political empowerment, women must be voted into in key leadership slots. 

Kanu will win the coming elections yet there is only one woman in its new 23-member committee. In the Kenya National Union of Teachers branch elections, women leaders always gun for the second-rate women representative's post, leaving the chairperson and secretary-general slots to men. This stems from the notion that women play second fiddle. 

Women should lobby for lofty positions even in church. Kudos to the Anglican Church for ordaining, after 150 years, a woman Archdeacon in Embu diocese. But why we can't have a bishop. 

The coming chance must not be frittered away. Ugandan Vice-President Specioza Kazibwe must be lonely and Kenya should consider giving her someone to equal her status. 

JOHN MUCHANGI, 
Eldoret.