Suffer in silence no longer

Suffer in silence no longer

Credit:Internet Sources

By Kevin Kang’ethe and Musyoka Ngui

According to the latest statistics from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (2014) it is clear that the war against gender based violence is far from being won. Over half or 53% of women suffer from sexual violence in silence.

The above rise in domestic violence can be attributed to religious believes, low levels of education, age and occupation, says the report.

    Women without religious affiliations were the most likely to speak out against GBV at 75%, the Roman Catholics followed closely at 61% likelihood to report the vice to authorities. Muslims, Protestants and other Christian denominations came closely third at 59%. This shows that the clergy have their work cut out as they should use their positions to fight the gender based violence. In a related case in August last year, Jackline Mwende who was physically assaulted by her husband grabbed the headlines when she shocked the world by revealing that her pastor advised her stick to her marriage despite the abuse.

    Safety and recovery centres would enable women to escape the wrath of their aggressors. Already there are laws and policies against GBV but their implementation remain ineffective.

    Male partners, brothers, fathers and other male relatives should also be involved in the GBV campaign. Empowering the women alone without commensurate empowerment to men will be detrimental in the fight against GBV.

    In the long term, women should be allowed equal chances to access quality education just as men. KDHS survey indicates that better educated women were less likely to experience sexual violence than their uneducated counterparts. It says that 10% of women with secondary level education suffered sexual violence compared to 18 % of women who had only completed primary school.

   Equally, women need to be afforded affirmative action at the work places as it was revealed that the more money women have the less likely they were to encounter sexual violence. 11% of rich women were taken advantage of sexually by people close to them compared to 16 % of poor women.

There is a vague notion of what constitutes rape. Rape isn’t just sexual assault along the dark alleys of the streets. An expanded definition of rape should cover having sex with a partner without their consent. Even married partners should obtain consent from their spouses. Friends who spike drinks of their peers only to drug them and leave them without “knowing what hit them” should also have spotlight shone on them. 

    Parents should be watchful when they delegate childcare responsibilities to guardians, house helps or even close relatives as they more often than not turn to be the sex pests gnawing at the dignity of the child.