Why Being a female police is hard

Twenty-three-year-old Josephine Arika was among the 3,000 police recruits who graduated during the police passing-out parade at Kiganjo Police College in Nyeri County on April 5.

After undergoing grueling training and eager to serve her country, Ms Arika was thrilled by the fact that she was among the 50 cadets who would be serving in the heart of the capital city in Starehe division. 

But her excitement was short-lived and her eagerness to serve severely jolted on her first day as a policewoman.

“We arrived in Nairobi from Nyeri at around 6 p.m. Our first stop was the Nairobi police headquarters in Milimani where we were to wait for our new bosses to come and take us to various police stations. We all expected this would take at most an hour. We were wrong! We waited outside in the cold the whole night,” she told the Sunday Nation last week.

Morning and afternoon came and went, and it was only at around 5 p.m. the next day that their new bosses came to pick them up. 

“We were taken to the Mathare Police Depot and the 20 of us (women) were allocated two rooms to share. We stored our bags in one room and slept in the other,” she says.

The next day, each of the 50 cadets was posted to various police stations within Starehe division. While Ms Arika was not new to the poor living conditions that police put up with, she was shocked when she was told where she would be staying.

“I was told to share a house with a male colleague. He was not married but was already sharing the house with two other female officers. I did not think twice; I used the little cash I had saved to rent a single room near the police station,” she says.

There was no way she was going to share a house with a stranger, let alone a man she had never met.
Ms Arika says her life is endangered by the fact that she lives outside the designated police areas, but she has no option as long as the status quo in the Service remains.

We met Ms Arika at the police lines in Mathare where she comes to clean her police uniform.

“Look at these houses. Look at the windows and the roof that is falling apart. The toilets and bathrooms are pathetic. People here shower in the single rooms that they share with men,” said Ms Arika.

Women remain under-represented in Kenya’s Police Service. It is estimated that women make up only 10 per cent of the force.

Because the Police Service is a man’s world, the working environment is hardly woman-friendly as the structures are built to suit male police officers. From sharing houses with sometimes unhygienic and “uncultured” male colleagues, to the long working hours and discrimination, policewomen have a rough time navigating their way in the Service.

Corporal Janet Musyimi is in her early 40s and has been a policewoman for 21 years. The initial years of service were difficult and unbearable, but her greatest challenge to date remains the long working hours spent away from her three sons and her husband.

“I wake up every day at 4 a.m. because I am supposed to report to work by 5 a.m.,” says Mrs Musyimi who is a traffic police officer on Jogoo Road. “I leave work when traffic in the city eases. Traffic mostly normalises at 10 pm, but once or twice a week I sign out a little earlier or later. I sometimes get home around 11 p.m., and that is when I get to see my family.” .

Mrs Musyimi spends most of her day standing, directing traffic and dealing with unruly drivers. But it gets exceptionally difficult when Nature calls.

“My office is Jogoo Road. There are no toilets, bathrooms or changing rooms. I have learnt how to survive. Oftentimes when a female officer reports to work, she is not sure where she will be posted on assignment; you worry if you will ever go back home to your children,” she says.

But it was in Mrs Musyimi’s early days as a police officer that her young family experienced the tough challenges that come with their mother’s career.

She recalls how she shared houses with different male colleagues over a period of 15 years and the toll it took on her family.

Share houses
“I shared houses with male colleagues, and sometimes I would be paired with a mannerless colleague who came in drunk with different women every day. Sometimes you have teenagers in the house, and your children are vulnerable and exposed to sex too early in life,” she says.

But most female officers who spoke to the Sunday Nation said it is much easier to share a house with a male colleague than with a female because the house becomes too small to accommodate two women.
“Two female officers will fight over the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and even a husband!” Mrs Musyimi said.

“I once shared a house with a female officer, and our house irls could not stand each other. Both had to go for the sake of peace.”

The demanding nature of their jobs eventually takes its toll on their marriages and relationships, as Corporal Millicent Kibira reveals. Ms Kibira, who is based in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, says her husband of 20 years eventually walked out on her and three daughters because he could not cope with her schedules.

“Marriage gets tougher as you stay longer in the police service. Most female officers are married to their male counterparts. If your husband is a policeman, he will understand why you come home at 11 p.m. and not 6 p.m. If you are married to a teacher who works from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. like I was, then you are unlucky,” she said.

Most female officers marry their male colleagues, not because they want to, as Ms Kibira explained, but simply because they have hardly any social life to mingle and interact with men outside the Police Service.

“You have no time to keep a man the way he would want you to. You are never there to cook, wash his clothes or even be with him. Our children miss us. When mine were younger, I would stay up to a week without seeing them, only communicating on the phone. You don’t even have time to supervise their homework,” she said.

Police houses at Mathare slums Depot Nairobi, July 11 2014 ANTHONY OMUYA (NAIROBI).

Nursing mothers have it rough because the Service does not provide a conducive environment that allows mothers to take time off to be with their babies beyond the stipulated maternity leave.

Crèches to enable lactating nursing mothers to devote more attention to their nursing babies remain a pipe dream. Even as they are allowed a 90-day maternity leave, many mothers in the Service do not have the luxury of breastfeeding their babies for all of the first six months.

The female officers suggest that the government, in its efforts to support women in the Service, needs to employ more police officers to allow them to work in shifts. This way, mothers can spend more time with their families.

“They must improve our housing. As a mother, I get worried leaving my children with a stranger. They could get molested. If not, then we should be adequately remunerated to allow us to rent houses elsewhere,” says Mrs Musyimi.

In April, a traffic police officer based at Kiambu police division Linda Okello caused a stir when she was reprimanded by county commander James Mugeria over they way she was dressed.

This was after Ms Okello was photographed wearing a tight-fitting skirt while on duty at a sporting event. Female officers interviewed said Ms Okello’s case was a classic example of gender-based discrimination in the Service.

“She was probably given that uniform years ago, and it became tight because her body is growing. Why do they complain about Linda’s tight skirt, and we see many male police officers wearing ill-fitting shirts whose buttons are almost coming off because the shirts are too tight?” Mrs Musyimi asked.

Ms Okello has challenged the disciplinary action taken against her in the courts.

Names have been changed to protect the officers’ identities.