JACINTA KIRAGURI has been around long enough to watch and experience the injustice served to women in career growth- especially being in a technical profession. Today she can confidently say that technology and digitization have set the playing field level for both men and women and there is no excuse to sideline women anymore. This year’s theme for the International Women’s Day is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, and the world ought to smile at Jacinta and others whose resilience has ensured that today, women are not strangers in tech offices, and recent innovations are making things even better!
Anyone who knew Jacinta in her childhood days which began in the late 1960s should have known she was never going to end up in one of those polite and womanly careers. Her behaviour and dress code went hand in hand- for someone who likes to climb trees, dresses wouldn’t be ideal, would they? Luckily for her, unlike many African homes at the time, in hers, she was allowed to wear whatever she liked. In school, she took Art & Craft rather than Home Science. She preferred to sculpt out of stone than to cook and knit.
“I was certain about my intention to pursue engineering after school,” she says, narrating her passion for sciences and technical subjects. In high school, she preferred physics and chemistry to literature. At Form 5 & 6, she specialized in Math, Physics and Chemistry. Out of the 56 students that took this MPC combination, only three were girls, and they often were asked by some of the men what they were doing in that class. “We even shaved our heads in a bid to prove that we were just like them,” she says with a chuckle. The three girls all did well. “When someone doubts your capability, you put in double effort,” she explains.
The only woman in the department
Unfortunately, Jacinta missed the mark to join the university, but it is not a wonder that she still chose a technical course even if she had to start at certificate level. She joined the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication for a Certificate in Studio Technical operations. Here, once again, there were only three girls in the class of 25. Never mind that all the way from her A-levels, she did ‘side hustles during holidays to pay for her fees. Luckily, a priest from her home area lifted this burden for her when she joined KIMC, so then she only took jobs to boost her pocket money. “It was worse with the class that came after mine,” she recalls, “There was only one girl!”
Nevertheless, Jacinta gained the skills to operate Radio and TV broadcast equipment, and soon after landed a job at the Kenya Television Network. As expected, she was the only woman in that office, working alongside men who were older than her and who never cared to hide their surprise at what ‘a young beautiful girl like her was doing in that department.’ “Hapa sio mahali pa warembo,” they would say, meaning that that was not the place for beautiful girls.
“Comments came from my teammates and from all staff around us, men and women alike. It was not uncommon for me to hold a camera and someone would ask, ‘Utaweza kweli?’ (Will you be able to lift/operate it?).” Unfortunately, she recalls, men adapted quicker than women, hurrying up to help her after wondering aloud if she had made the right choice with her career. Women asked their questions for a longer time before they made friends and accepted that indeed, they had a woman as a studio technical operator and she wasn’t trying things out- she was in it for the long haul.
“I was among the first women in Kenya to be a studio technical operator. The other one I knew of was in KBC and she later on moved to another department,” she states, indicating that she is glad she stayed because at KTN, it was not until 15 years later that they had another lady join the team. In those 15 years, if she had left, the possibility of a lady in that department would still have been extremely remote, almost non-existent, at KTN.
The office that wasn’t cut out for the woman
Needless to say, no one was prepared to have a woman in the technical operations department, and sad to say, little was done to adjust. For example, before KTN was moved to the larger offices on Mombasa Road, lockers in the office were few and so colleagues shared. In her department, she had no one to share with. “As a woman, your locker will have to hold rather personal items, including, sometimes, pads. Because of that, I couldn’t share a locker with any of my colleagues in the department because they were all men,” she says. She, therefore, had a bag that sat somewhere in a corner almost permanently, and it became her locker until they moved to the Mombasa Road offices where there was more space.
Despite this, she coped well with all the situations that reminded her she was a woman, and she became such buddies with her colleagues that they stopped to look at her as a woman and only saw her as their colleague.
Natural injustices?
Jacinta was doing well, until she had a child. “No mother should be separated for a night from her three-months old baby, no. For the first time, my hardness was softened; bruised. And this was the first time I felt that something needed to be done,” she recalls with nostalgia.
She did lots of night shifts with the guys when she had an infant, and the feeling that came with this isn’t the same one of not being able to share a locker because you’re the only woman in the room. According to her, this was something that could be changed, and when she was made manager, she sure did change things. “I made sure that ladies, especially if they were mothers, never did night shift,” she states.
Professional and Career Development
Despite all this, Jacinta has been determined enough to make remarkable progress in her career. The promise of a salary increment encouraged her to upgrade her certificate to a diploma through a Media Technology course at KIMC, but after that, increment or none, she had fallen in love with learning.
“When I went back to class for the diploma, I realized I was getting much more than the salary increment that awaited me,” she says.
One of her immediate benefits was communication skills. She admits that many tech people are poor in communication, and for her, she started to see how it had been a limitation in her interactions beyond the technical office. She acknowledged that it is possible to be in a room and feel intimidated by the people you are in it with, yet the intimidation is internal- coming from your inability to communicate at their level. In her opinion, experience on the job cannot override the benefits of advancing one’s skills.
That said, she went ahead to take a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication/Media Studies at St. Paul’s University, a Master of Arts in Communication at the University of Nairobi and is currently undertaking a PhD in Journalism and Media Studies.
Besides, on her way up from Studio Technical Operator to Manager- Studio Technical Operations, she has found it necessary and beneficial to undertake several courses in management. “Leading in doing the actual work is one thing, but managing people is something different with the need for additional skills.” Especially in her position, having been promoted above men who had been in the department a while, newly learnt management skills came in really handy. For example, she remembers practicing the art of not raising her voice even in conflict with her team, and it saved situations which would have been worsened by an impression that she was leading ‘emotionally’. She is glad that she learnt to be a sober leader and the same was known of her.
Thus, it is not a wonder that Jacinta was the technical team lead at the presidential debate that preceded Kenya’s 2022 general elections, which meant pulling together resources in the form of equipment and people from various media houses for the joint media venture. She was in charge of about 65 in the crew and ensured perfect transmission not only to the mainstream media but also to 89 digital platforms. For her, this was an epic moment in her career.
DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality
According to Jacinta, the nature of women has for a long time worked against their career excellence and growth, and insensitive managers have over the years refused to adjust, even where it has been possible, to help women not stagnate in their careers. Sadly, just like Jacinta, many women have faced the unfair comment to choose between their job or the baby.
“Things have to change now. There are enough digital developments in the workplace to empower women to do better- developments which managers cannot turn a blind eye to,” she confidently asserts, adding, “Today you cannot say that someone else has to take a woman’s job because she couldn’t spend long hours in the office as she has an infant to breastfeed. A lot of work and meetings can be done remotely and Covid-19 drove that point home already.” Besides, the same developments have made it easier for more women to advance their studies and take more courses.
In her profession, Jacinta has seen the metamorphosis that has welcomed more women into it. “We have moved from the era of carrying heavy machines every time we have Outside Broadcasting, to doing more and more live streams from just a phone. No one has an excuse to push women out now- it’s not their muscles we need on the job- mostly just their brain,” she asserts unapologetically.
For many years, advocacy has been towards creating a better future for women. Well the future is here and it is time to act.
