Leading Forms of GBV among Youth in Kenya: The Experiences of Youthful Women from Nairobi City County

Introduction

Gender-based violence (GBV) affects individuals worldwide, regardless of their age, race, or socio-economic status. It is deeply rooted in gender inequality and harmful gender norms that perpetuate power imbalances between men and women. GBV can take many forms – physical, sexual, psychological, economic and socio-cultural.

The study, PMA Agile Gender/ Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Phase 2.0 explored key manifestations of GBV namely intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence and sexual harassment among young women in Nairobi City County through the Nairobi youth cohort. PMA Agile is led by International Center for Reproductive Health Kenya (Peter Gichangi, Mary Thiongo), Kenyatta University Women’s Economic Empowerment Hub (Grace Ngare, Regina Mwatha and Mercy Kamau), and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/ Center for Global Women’s Health and Gender Equity (Michele Decker).

Methodology

Adolescent women ages 15-24 were initially recruited in 2019 through respondent-driven sampling and re-contacted for surveying every two years. In the 2023 round of data collection, 550 young women were re-contacted with replenishment sampling to account for attrition and cohort aging (281 young women; 831 young women total). All seventeen sub-counties of Nairobi County were covered. The 2023 cohort were aged 19 to 29; partner violence measures were constrained to young women that were currently married, were sexually active, or were dating in the past 12 months. More details are available at PMA Gender.

Three forms of GBV experienced by young women

Data from the 2023 round of the study showed that 28.1% of young women reported experiencing physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in the past year. There was overlap in sexual and physical IPV experience: 13.3% of partnered young women experienced both physical and sexual IPV, and only 4.4% and 10.3% experienced only sexual and physical IPV, respectively. Existing research confirms this overlap and shows that physical partner violence is often accompanied by physical and emotion IPV.2 Across the full sample of young women, 4.5% experienced non-partner sexual violence in the past year.

Sexual harassment was pervasive, with 71.7% of young women reporting that they experienced it in public spaces in the past year. The harassment manifested in leering, unwanted sexual comments, jokes, or gestures, unwanted sexual attention, unwanted touching, and grabbing. The study concluded that IPV and sexual harassment are leading forms of GBV for young women in Nairobi.

Help Seeking Behavior

About half (53.8%) of IPV and non-partner sexual violence survivors spoke to someone about their experience. Most of them spoke to a friend, followed by a relative and to a lesser extent a peer educator. Speaking to someone did not always translate into seeking help. Only about 30% of those who experienced intimate partner violence and 31.5% of those went through non partner sexual violence reported seeking help. Help mainly consisted of counselling and then medical support. Very few sought shelter, reported to the police or pursued justice.

Survivors reported various reasons for not seeking help, including fear, stigma, embarrassment, and fear of jeopardizing family honour. Some survivors were obstructed by the family and some did not consider the problem significant enough to report. Some did not wish to put the abuser in trouble, or risk abandonment by the partner.

Conclusion and Key Messages

  • Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a main form of GBV with 28% of young women in Nairobi experiencing it in the past-year.
  • Help-seeking is still low despite availability of services – only about 30% of survivors reported seeking help.
  • Key barriers to service seeking are shame and fear.
  • Sexual harassment in public spaces is rampant, reported by about 72% of women.

 

Some Policy Recommendations

  • Policy intervention for IPV and sexual violence is needed, with focus on ensuring survivors can access medical and justice services free of charge and in a timely manner.
  • Counteracting the social norms that tolerate and normalize GBV through evidence-based programming and guidance, such as the RESPECT Women Strategy,3 is instrumental to creating an environment free of IPV.
  • The Sexual Offences Act should be revised to comprehensively address sexual harassment in public spaces.
  • Drawing on evidence-based curriculums, such as those provided by the WHO,4 providing GBV sensitization and survivor-centered response training to police and medical professions is needed.
  • Intensified GBV awareness is necessary and could be carried out by actors such as civil society, community-based organisations, and the mass media.

 

References

  1. PMA Gender, Kenyatta University, and International Center for Reproductive Health Kenya (ICRHK). Results from PMA Agile 2/GBV Descriptive Analysis, 2023. Baltimore, Maryland, USA & Nairobi, Kenya
  2. Stiller, M., Bärnighausen, T. & Wilson, M.L. Intimate partner violence among pregnant women in Kenya: forms, perpetrators and associations. BMC Women’s Health 22, 210, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-022-01761-7
  3. UN Women and Social Development Direct. Transformed Attitudes, Beliefs and Norms, RESPECT: Preventing Violence against Women Strategy Summary, 2020.
  4. WHO 2021 Caring for Women Caring for women subjected to violence: a WHO curriculum for training health-care providers, revised edition, 2021.

Accessed: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240039803

 

Prepared with support from Yuri Aiura, Shannon Wood, Anaise Williams, Mary Thiongo, Peter Gichangi, Grace Ngare, Mercy Kamau, Bianca Devoto, and Michele Decker.

 Study partners

Johns Hopkins University, Center for Global Women’s Health and Gender Equity

International Centre for Reproductive Health Kenya

Kenyatta University, Women’s Economic Empowerment Hub

 

 

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