Young women across the world including Africa have been actively engaged in movement building and in most cases are mobilized along different strengths and categories including professional lines, political affiliation, urban/rural lines, class lines, racial lines, national lines, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and around specific issues (which include HIV & AIDS, peace, economic justice, gender based violence, transitional justice, reproductive rights etc), and the possibilities are endless. Despite such differences, young women have been building alliances with like-minded organizations, activists and individuals and with actors from across a broad spectrum of social movements in order to strengthen their voices and amplify their impacts in advancing women’s rights.

The Beijing Conference in 1995 was a watershed for the participation of young women in the women’s movement globally and the formation of groups and organisations focusing on young women. Since then, young women have been at the forefront in articulating their visions on women’s rights in development worldwide. In 1999 younger women attending the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) created the youth caucus to ensure that younger women's voices are heard in the CSW, Beijing reviews, and UN process in general. The youth caucus made strong representation at the Beijing +5 review, and has been instrumental in empowering young women at the UN. During the same time period, younger women from around the world were organizing in grassroots organizations, larger feminist organizations, the international peace and global solidarity movements, and on university campuses.

Three decades after the launch of the UN Women’s Decade (1975-1985), young women at the Kenyan Gender Festival are reflecting on what the growth in the participation of younger women means. We recognize that today we are more successful in having our voices heard and that there have been efforts to ensure young women’s specific issues and concerns are being addressed.

Young women are not just in women’s movements but they do and can transform movements.

In Kenya, the Young Women’s Leadership Institute (YWLI) has been nurturing young women’s leadership and creating spaces to ensure the engagement of young women in policy processes in the country. YWLI has a network for young women, and other program activities that are strategically focussed on movement building and the strengthening of the women’s movement in Kenya. The Gender Festival is just one of the opportunities for young women to participate and experience what other women’s organisations have been doing to further the woman’s agenda, to dialogue and have a space to voice their views and visions on that agenda and most importantly celebrate the gains that have been achieved so far.

 Young women are involved in public forums, marches, campaigns, working and volunteering in women’s rights organizations, creating and leading young women’s rights organizations, students/university unions, conferences, workshops, meetings, trainings, websites, moderating e forums/ newsletters, regional frameworks, and regional networks.
Young women realize the need for self identity to facilitate authenticity and to reinvigorate the meaning of feminism to enable young women to participate in different global and national spaces. There is a need for women in Kenya to be strategic about where we place ourselves, and using the power we have in order to continue contributing to make change happen in our own settings. It is against this background that young women are participating at the gender festival.

This festival is its first of its kind in Kenya, there are going to be many more. This one is key for it sets the tone- “Let’s Celebrate, Reflect…and Let us Dance!” It is a space where women’s resources are going to converge. It is likely to be a space where new ideas and campaigns are going to be born. A space where all generations and categories of women will be attending and participating; where activists and researchers meet, where advocates and the ordinary woman share, where different views and opinions will be voiced and a space where all those voices will continue to echo the strength of a woman and the strength in our diversity.  This is yet another space for young women to be part of the action… 

Young women are the future of the movement, and the support - or backbone-of the movement. Young women are also an unexplored pool to recruit from and have been seen as long-term support for the movement. They are a source of new ideas, and intervention. At this gender festival a lot of young women are expecting to bring perspectives and experiences that will continue to push the woman’s agenda forward.

Critical points in moving forward:

• We are keen not to get stuck in the past divides of the women's community/movement. Some people have labelled women either “elites” or “not grassroots enough”. We should be able to address these issues in different ways, and be comfortable with the fact that we will not always agree. We should find ways to move beyond these presupposed divides, and move forward for change as a cohesive whole recognition the strength in the diversity of women.
• We need to politicize younger women and ensure that they are actively engaged in the political process-both on the individual level, and to help and support other younger women to become involved.

We recognize that self esteem, assertiveness and self actualisation of young women is key to their participation in different public and private spaces. The work that was began during the 1975 Women’s Conference in Mexico MUST GO ON. For we all know that the goals of Equality, Peace and Development are still very relevant to the Kenyan woman today!