When MPs paused budget debate over mini skirt order

Women in miniskirts in the 1970's.[File, Standard]

The question of whether women should wear mini skirts or not is not new.

The matter once again came to the fore when the Kenya Methodist University, through a memo, gave a raft of requirements regarding the students' dress code.

Among the items banned was mini skirts, which was defined as any piece of clothing worn above the knee by female students.

KEMU joins other institutions that have had to veto women's dress code in Kenya. President Jomo Kenyatta, too, had a run-in with the mini skirt.

Following a government circular that government employees shun this piece of clothing, the matter became the subject of a heated debate in Parliament in June 1972.

The House was busy debating the year's budget proposals when the Member for Abothuguchi (now Imenti Central) Julius Muthamia revisited the mini skirt order.

"I have now stopped talking about hospitals but I would like to point out that many people have been talking about the mini skirt," he began. "Why should you interfere with girls who wear mini skirts?"

According to Muthamia, this was a human rights issue and the girls' constitutional rights were being violated. He had what he felt was a solution: "I think if the government keeps quiet about these skirts, these girls will stop using mini skirts instead of issuing circulars to to the girls who are working in ministries telling them to lengthen their frocks or skirts."

Muthamia stated that fashion goes out after two years and it was only a matter of time before the girls got tired of the minis. In fact, he stated that it would have been better for the government to wait "until the time when the girls were to shorten their skirts to reach the buttocks before starting to tell them to lengthen them".

Mwai Kibaki, then Finance Minister, interjected that Muthamia knew little about fashion "since we know that the mini skirt has been popular for more than six years".

However, Kwale MP Kassim Mwamzadi could not buy the 'human rights' line, terming it a matter of public decency.

"I am sure the Constitution itself does not allow people to go naked unless one is mad. Is (Muthamia) in order to impute that when we stop girls from walking naked we are interfering with their liberty?"

Dr Munyua Waiyaki, then Deputy Speaker, did not believe that wearing a mini skirt left a girl naked "except that the things are a little more exposed than you may want them to be. Some of us like the mini skirts!"

"Let me leave that one to you so that you may judge for yourself," roared Muthamia as the debate moved on to the unemployment crisis.