Kenya Has More Employed Women than Men, Data Reveals

Women seem to be enjoying the largest piece of the pie when it comes to employment as compared to men in Kenya.

As interesting stats continue to unfold from the Census 2019 reports, we learn that as of August 2019 women outnumbered men in employment.

Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Census report revealed that there are about 9.89 million employed women while employed men are about 9.79 million. This indicates that there are 100000 more employed women.

As a percentage, Women enjoy 50.2 percent of the working population surpassing the half mark and leaving the remaining 49.8 percent to men.

More women engage in economic activities in the rural areas where 600,000 more women are working as compared to men.

While people thought that men are the breadwinners in most families, women are disapproving of this myth and are dominating the employment sector.

However, the story is different in urban areas where more men are employed as compared to women. Men enjoy a 54.4 percent of employment share against women’s 45.6 percent in different urban centers across the country.

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Unemployment crisis

As women are continuing to cement their dominance in the employment sector, the story of unemployment continues to hit new levels. As some would say, the ‘reggae’ of unemployment cannot stop.

About half of the Kenyan population is not working.KNBS categorizes unemployed Kenyans into two, the first potion is the 2.62 million people who cannot find work while the other 18.93 million are outside the workforce.

The 2.62 million unemployed people are either looking for work or cannot find work while the 18.93 million  Kenyans are the ones who are not willing to work or cannot work like retirees, housewives or the very young.

“The results show that the economically active population was 22.3 million, comprising the working (19.7 million) and those seeking work (2.6 million). Females accounted for 50.2 percent of the total working population,” revealed KNBS.

“18.9 million Individuals were outside the labor force during the reference period. There was 10.1 million youth aged 18-34 and 4.1 million youth aged 15-24 in the labor force.” KNBS added.

“Persons outside employment is what was referred to as the economically inactive and includes full-time students, homemakers, the retired, incapacitated persons and those who are either too young or too old to work.”

About 13.9 million people in the rural areas are in some form of employment while 13.29 have nothing to do.

Another important point to note is that in as much as women have ways of keeping themselves busy, they engage in small scale activities where the pay is very little. Men, on the other hand, are doing very rewarding jobs.

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