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When Women Rule: Kenyan MP Peris Tobiko

by Katy Migiro and Valeria Cardi

After outmaneuvering her illiterate father three times by the age of 18 to escape his plans to make her a child bride, Peris Tobiko decided the only way to protect other Maasai girls in Kenya from harmful traditions was to become a leader.

She made national headlines when she was elected to parliament in 2013 - the first woman from her conservative Maasai community to win a seat - despite elders performing a death curse on anyone who dared vote for her.

"When I was growing up, I was just thinking: 'How do I get to defend the girl child?" 48-year-old Tobiko told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, seated in the leafy garden of her family home in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

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