The appointment of Maj-Gen Fatuma Gaiti Ahmed as service commander in Kenya and probably Africa is a gendered story of determination and resilience intertwined with the progress made by women in the military.
From entering the military when women were not allowed to marry or have children to clawing her way to the coveted service commander position, Maj-Gen Ahmeds rise is a milestone.
In the early days of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), a camp was specifically built for the seven Women Service Corps members at Eastleigh Air Base Officers Mess while the rest of the officers went to the barracks.
Among them were Maj P.N. Ikua, Judy Angaine and later Maj-Gen Ikua.
Were it not for Gen Daudi Tonjes foresight, Maj-Gen Ahmed and her Women Service Corps colleagues would perhaps still be serving as the despised female auxiliary team confined to stores or clerical jobs.
Her journey to the helm of the Kenya Air Force began in 1983 when she was recruited as a cadet after jokingly lining up at a stadium in her home town to join the army even though she was serving as a prisons officer.
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She had returned home in search of a national identity card but was instead recruited into the military in 1984.
She graduated as Second Lieutenant to serve in the Women Service Corps an auxiliary unit of the military that was dedicated to churning out women who only served in secretarial and store management roles.
Members of the corps were not even considered fit enough to be their own drivers, let alone soldiers.
Thanks to the push by the Defence Council chaired by Cabinet secretary Aden Duale, Maj-Gen Ahmed was named the head of Kenya Air Force.
Mr Duale, who has cultivated close relations with Defence Council, has pushed for firsts in the KDF.
It is during his stint as Defence Cabinet Secretary that women have been named to senior positions.
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Despite being senior officers, members of the Women Service Corps were looked down upon by male soldiers.
About 10 years after her predecessors began their quest to be formally integrated into the mainstream Kenya Army, Kenya Air Force and Kenya Navy, Maj-Gen Fatuma Ahmed joined the Air Force after the disbandment of the Women Service Corps in 1999.
The assimilation of the corps into the mainstream military also did away with restrictions imposed on women not to marry or get pregnant.
Maj-Gen Ahmed, who is married to a fellow military officer, has three children. She served as a battalion commander and later headed the Personnel Department at the Air Force before being promoted to Brigadier.
She became the Managing Director of the Defence Forces Medical Insurance Scheme on August 10, 2015.
She was the first woman brigadier, first female major general and now the first female service-commander. Maj-Gen Fatuma may even become the first female Chief of Defence Forces.
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Several women officers occupy enviable ranks and positions in the Kenyan military.
Brig Zipporah Kioko is Chief of Strategic Communications at Defence Headquarters, Brig Yvonne Kerubo is the Chief of Legal Service at Defence Headquarters, Brig Joyce Sitienei is the Director of the International Peace Support Training Centre, Karen, Brig Elizabeth Omollo is the Director of Examinations at the National Defence University-Kenya while Brig Caroline Mutisya is attached to the Office of the National Security Adviser to the President.
The fight by women to be assimilated into the mainstream military has not been easy, if recollections by many like Maj (rtd) P.N Ikua, are to go by.
The retired major says it was years after writing a proposal on how women could be integrated into the military that then-Chief of General Staff Daudi Tonje actualised it.
In 1975 I wrote a paper proposing the assimilation of women into the three services so that they would come directly under their unit command system for career development as opposed to being restricted to a limited career path in the Womens Service Corps, she says in a book on Kenya Army.
The idea was to create an avenue to develop, get promoted and generally grow alongside men within the services. Promotion is only possible in a system where there is a career progression path, hence the fight for assimilation of women into the services.
Maj (rtd) Ikua says women were initially never accepted as equal soldiers, drivers or riflemen. There always was a distinction of the men and the women in the forces.
Her quest to integrate women into the services and train them into tough soldiers who
