Lawmaker kicked out of Kenyan parliament for taking baby to work

A Kenyan lawmaker was kicked out of the parliamentary chamber on Wednesday for bringing her infant daughter in with her, in a move that drew outrage from some fellow politicians and the public.

The lawmaker, Zuleikha Hassan, said she took her baby with her to work at the National Assembly in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, after an emergency had left her without child care.

“I said, ‘Why should I stay at home and not go to work, just because of the baby?’” she said in an interview. “Why should they criminalise having a baby? So, I said, ‘I’m going to Parliament with a baby.’”

She also lamented the lack of child care facilities at the government buildings, and said with more young women getting into the workforce, “the spaces have to be more sensitive, especially for younger women who are in childbearing age.”

In video from inside the chamber, a baby’s soft babbling can be heard in the background as the speaker of Parliament demands that Hassan leave. Other members of Parliament appeared to shove one another in the centre of the chamber as the squabble unfolded.

“Those members who are crossing the floor willy-nilly must know they are out of order,” said Chris Omulele, the temporary speaker of the House, as he raised his voice in an attempt to restore calm before repeatedly demanding that the lawmaker leave. “The honourable Zuleikha, kindly withdraw with decorum.”

Those who demanded Hassan’s removal cited a rule that bans “strangers” — people other than elected members — inside the chamber, saying the regulation also applied to children.

The speaker eventually ordered Hassan to be escorted from the chamber. Omulele maintained that the government had sufficient facilities for women to take care of their children on parliamentary grounds but said that doing so in the chamber was not permitted.

Some female members of Parliament left the chamber with Hassan as a sign of solidarity.

Female lawmakers also walked out of Parliament this month after a male politician was arrested on a charge of assaulting a female colleague. At the time of that demonstration, many male members of Parliament could be seen laughing.

A similarly glib attitude from some male lawmakers seemed to surround the expulsion on Wednesday, as Omulele laughed and called the situation “drama” and “unprecedented.”

Some lawmakers condemned the speaker and their male colleagues. Sara Korere, a member of Parliament who walked out with Hassan, said the mentality had to change.

“For a very long time,” she told Citizen TV, women had been “subjected to choosing their careers over their babies, of choosing their babies over their careers.”

“I think it is high time we make a statement and a strong one that we cannot continue to be subjected to situations whereby you have to choose between the baby and the work,” she added later in an interview. “We’re not just going to do it for Parliament; we’ll also have to make sure that other public and private sectors, where they employ women, must do the same.”

Others demanded a change to the rules that prevented the children of lawmakers from being in the chamber and demanded a place for women to breastfeed in the Parliament.

“This is clear discrimination of the highest order in terms of women issues,” Sophia Noor, another member of Parliament, told Citizen TV. “And if they do not establish the breastfeeding place, we’ll be able to come with all our children to the house.”

It’s not the first time that a female lawmaker has been met with censure after bringing her baby to work. In Denmark this year, Mette Abildgaard was told she must remove her infant daughter from Parliament, a demand that set off a debate in a country that has some of the world’s most generous parental leave allowances.

Elsewhere, female politicians have been applauded and allowed freedom and support in bringing their young children to the workplace.

Larissa Waters, an Australian lawmaker, was hailed as a barrier breaker in 2017 when she breastfed her newborn daughter in Parliament. A year earlier, a member of the Icelandic Parliament received attention when she was called upon to defend a bill while breastfeeding.

© 2019 New York Times News Service