Why Kenya's Consumer Protection Regime Needs a Gender Lens

 

 

Image Generated by Gemini.[i]

 

Article by Ninette Mwarania and Abiud Lagat.[ii]

Millions of Kenyan women buy food, pay school fees, take out loans, transact through mobile money and sign insurance policies daily. They represent a segment of consumers who occasionally experience concerns, be it a defective product, a predatory loan, a fraudulent digital transaction, a late delivery or even expired milk. The challenge, however, is that empirical evidence suggests that women are far less likely than men to formally complain. The tragedy, is that Kenya's consumer protection system is not designed to notice, let alone fix, that gap.

A 14 year analysis of the Competition Authority of Kenya's (the Authority) 2,682 unique consumer complaints between FY2012/13 and FY2025/26[1] tell a stark story. 1,770 (66.1%) of these complaints were lodged by men and 912 (33.9%) by women, roughly two complaints from men for one from a woman. Set against Kenya's actual population, the imbalance is even harder to explain. The 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census indicates an even split between the two genders, with women accounting for 50.5% and men 49.5% of the population.[2] Something is filtering women out of the formal complaint system long before a regulator ever sees their case. What’s more, Kenya’s 2024 FinAccess Household Survey[3] found that the formal financial inclusion gender gap has shrunk from 12.7% in 2006 to just 1.6% in 2024 driven overwhelmingly by mobile money uptake, indicating that women in Kenya are transacting at rates approaching parity with men. This attests to the fact that women are in the market, yet they are not showing up in the formal grievance channels.  

This piece suggests three reasons for this observation.   

First, the current complaints lodging form is gender-blind, assuming a generic consumer whose experience of the market is the same, buttressing the fact that gender disaggregated consumer complaint data is not available. Consequently, the remedies issued by the Authority over the years, are not intentionally customized to women. Indeed, the Authority’s figures are reconstructed from annual reports rather than drawn from a system built to track them.

Secondly, the 66/34 split is not evidence that women experience fewer consumer problems. Rather, it is an indication that while complaints handling mechanisms may be accessible to everyone, there are underlying concerns that must be addressed, including time, information and trust. The 2025 KNBS report on the Economic Value of Unpaid Domestic and Care Work in Kenya[4] indicates that women spend roughly five times more in unpaid caregiving and household labour work than men, annually. This leaves measurably less time for women to travel to a regulator's office, sit through a hearing or follow up a complaint over weeks or months. Consumer redress systems that require in-person visits, working-hours-only service windows, or repeated follow-up are, whether intentionally or not, systems suitable for consumers with more discretionary time. Similarly, women, particularly in rural and informal settings, are less likely to have encountered consumer education campaigns, financial literacy programs, or media that explains these rights in accessible language. Moreover, where trust in institutions to act fairly and confidentially is low, silence is often the rational choice, and regulators must ensure that they are seen to be credible and impartial.

Third, consumer complaint data patterns can be used by regulators to identify markets and sectors that require deeper scrutiny, to shape enforcement priorities. Firms contravening consumer protection regulations face less regulatory pressure simply because fewer of their victims are able or willing to formally complain. Gender disaggregated data would correct this market failure by ensuring that enforcement action is prioritized to correct this.

Kenya's complaint and redress processes have no legal barrier preventing women from filing a complaint with the Authority or a sector regulator. However, the system was built gender-neutral and has, in practice, produced gender-unequal outcomes. Robin S. Sharma, in his book The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class aptly reminds us that “What gets measured gets improved.” The most consequential reform, therefore, must be collecting and publishing consumer complaint data, disaggregated by gender, as standard practice, across all regulators, because all other strategies depend on first knowing where women are and are not being heard.

Once we have the data in place, these three strategies will certainly improve the current situation.

  • First, sector regulators with a consumer protection mandate must require gender-disaggregated complaint reporting from regulated entities, by enhancing the reporting tools or amending the policies to align to this.
  • Secondly, the Authority must prioritize cooperation with civil society and consumer lobby groups that have developed trusted relationships with women in communities where regulatory institutions have low visibility or low trust. These networks should be used as both outreach channels and feedback mechanisms.
  • Third, consumer education and financial literacy programmes designed specifically for women, delivered through channels, language and at periods that account for time poverty, such as market days, chamas, barazas should be considered. This will ensure wider reach, rather than assuming that generic public awareness and education campaigns reach everyone equally.

Ultimately, women are not missing from Kenya’s markets, rather, they are missing from the complaints data. That is a gap we can no longer afford to ignore.

 


[1] Competition Authority of Kenya, ‘Annual Reports’ https://www.cak.go.ke/planning/annual-reports

[2] Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census, Volume III: Distribution of Population by Age, Sex and Administrative Units (KNBS 2019).

[3] Central Bank of Kenya, Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and Financial Sector Deepening Kenya, 2024 FinAccess Household Survey (2024) https://www.knbs.or.ke/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-FinAccess-Household-Survey-Report.pdf

[4] Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Economic Value of Unpaid Domestic and Care Work in Kenya (2025) https://www.knbs.or.ke/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Economic-Value-of-Unpaid-Domestic-and-Care-Work-in-Kenya-2025.pdf


[i] Google Gemini, ‘AI-generated image of women transacting in a Kenyan market’ (22 October 2026).

[ii] Ninette K. Mwarania and Abiud K. Lagat are policy and research professionals at the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK).

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