By Natachi Onwuamaegbu
with help from Dianne Saliamo
Photos by Elsa Kariuki Silantoi is pictured beaming outside her office in a stunning pink pantsuit.
Silantoi Suzanne is used to being the only woman in the room. She’s also usually the youngest in the room – and the shortest in the room on days she doesn’t wear her heels.
Being a key member of Governor Sakaja Johnson’s cabinet is empowering and stifling – and balancing that mix of emotions is simply what it means to be a 29-year-old woman in government.
Now, if you being the only woman in the room is hard enough, Silantoi always has to raise her voice on an issue most government officials tend to gloss over: the difficulties of being a woman – especially a woman trying to gain economic power – in Nairobi. It’s hard work. Disheartening work. And yet, Silantoi doesn’t shy away from her gender – instead, for special days at work she can usually be seen in her favorite hot pink pantsuit and floral blouse.
“Should I put on my heels?” she asks as our interview begins, pushing away from the large conference room table. “If we’re going to be taking pictures.”
Silantoi being interviewed in a conference room at her workplace.
Silantoi’s work get-up, as feminine as it might be, is not even close to resembling the outfits of the women we’ve previously been featuring – the women of Kenyatta Market. Instead of “Darling Beauty” aprons and sensible tennis shoes, she wears a well fitting suit and earrings that dangle by her cheek.
But, Silantoi says, she shares some commonalities with the hair braiders. For one, they’re both fighting an uphill battle with external expectations – what they are assumed capable of based on their gender – and those expectations limit the work they try to do.
The job of the braider is widely considered to be the job of the woman. And the job of the woman is, well, in the words of Silantoi,
“Continuously overlooked by government,” she sighed. “I can’t say the government cares about women led jobs.”
This means women like the braiders receive less financial and political support, are subject to fewer policies to protect their rights in these so-called “pink collar jobs,” and less respect from the men who are meant to represent him. And while, according to Silantoi, the wages in government are somewhat standardized, there’s a… gaze she experiences every time she walks into a room.
“I can tell people are just like, what is this young girl doing here?” Silantoi said. “What does she know?”
One might assume that a person of her age just entered the political sphere, but this year marks Silantoi’s seventh year in Kenya’s political space.
“I saw what was going on in this country, and I thought I should show these men how it’s done,” Silantoi laughed, shaking her head.
She ran for a senatorial seat, and while she lost to her current boss, Governor Sakaja Johnson, she still remembers how proud receiving those 40,000 votes made her.
“My parents were so surprised I decided to enter politics,” said Silantoi.
But they shouldn’t have been – Silantoi has always been a winner. In school, she wanted to be an athlete, sprinting (and often times winning) the 100 and 200 meter dash. Competition has always been a part of her, even if politics haven’t.
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Silantoi is interviewed in a conference room at her workplace.
Historically, men in Kenya have had an easier time gaining access to business licenses and government funds. To mitigate this, the Kenyan constitution includes a clause stating that at least 30% of business licenses should go towards women or minority owned businesses.
“But there’s no follow through,” said Silantoi. “We need to do a full audit.”
And the government is no exception to the constitutional rule. The number of female employees does not reach 30% of the government’s total workforce, which makes the institution in charge of carrying out this policy unconstitutional as well. It’s a problem, and it goes deep.
As most Kenyans know, corruption is also a major issue in government, and it trickles down and polutes the rest of the country. While those at the top perpetrate the corruption, the one’s who suffer are the poorest in the community. Money is set aside to help small businesses or clear roads to markets, and it disappears. When Covid hit, the grants given to small businesses skipped the market. The market’s Chairman, Moses Wenani, watched the women suffer and could do nothing but call upon a government who turned deaf ears.
“There’s so much to change that sometimes it feels impossible," said Silantoi. "Because it’s not just problems in the government, there are so many biases.”
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Natachi Onwuamaegbu (project lead, centered) and Dianne Saliamo (executive producer, left) show the Braiding Nairobi e-version project concept to Suzanne Silantoi (right).
And Silantoi? As a Nairobi county Executive Committee Member, she’s doing her best to uplift female workers in a room full of men. But it’s harder than she could have ever imagined. In this fiscal year, she hopes to create 20 new markets host events in public park which will feature women owned businesses, and make sure small business owners, like the women of Kenyatta Market, know what government services they have access to and what funds they can apply for.
Being a woman in government means more to Silantoi than just what she can get done in the office.
“I hope that little girls look at me and see that one day they can strive to be in government too,” said Silantoi. “I hope they see that government isn’t just a place for men.”
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