The first time Mercy Akola’s husband hit her, they were talking about money.
“He wanted us to buy some dairy cows and have them reared at his parents’ home and when I objected, he punched me in the face. He said I was being ‘hard-headed’ and trying to take over his role as the head of the house,” she said.
They had met in college, and married after graduation, supported each other through the job search—he found a job first—and settled down to raise a family while building their careers. The cracks began to form three years into their marriage, after they had their first child and after Mercy enrolled for her master’s degree. She worked by day and attended classes in the evening and on weekends.
“We had a domestic worker to help with the chores and childcare, but after I enrolled for further studies, I noticed subtle changes and requests from my husband that made me feel uncomfortable. For instance, he would not eat food prepared by our domestic manager,” Mercy said.
He also insisted that his wife do his laundry and said her doing this would be proof that she loved and cared for him.
Initially, she did not think much of it, but things worsened after she completed her graduate degree and received a job offer. Her role involved occasional travel and her husband expressed displeasure every time she travelled for work. Eventually, he told her she could no longer travel for work.
“He told me it made him look bad because his peers said that wives use work trips to start extra-marital affairs. Ironically, he travelled for work too, but he said that my travelling would make me vulnerable to situations that would lead me to break my marriage vows,” she said.
Money also became a thorny issue in their marriage.
“I never hid the fact that I was making more money than him … we always made investments together and I had no problem with that because his background was in finance and I thought he was looking out for us,” she said.
Mercy is one of the many married women in Kenya who have experienced gender-based violence. According to the Kenya Demographic Health Survey 2022, 34 per cent of women in Kenya aged 15 to 49 years reported having experienced physical violence. Women with more than a secondary education reported the lowest levels of physical violence (23.3 per cent), while those with a primary education reported the highest rates (42.7 per cent), followed by those with no education (35.9 per cent). Rates of sexual violence were highest among those with a primary education (16.2 per cent), followed by those with a secondary education (11.7 per cent) and those with higher education (11.2 per cent). The lowest rates were among women with no education (8 per cent).
Higher levels of income were also associated with higher levels of sexual violence: Women who were employed reported twice as much (16.4 per cent) sexual violence as women who were not employed (8.6 per cent). Overall, 13 per cent of women reported that they had experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives, and 7 per cent reported that they had experienced sexual violence in the last 12 months.
Divorced and separated women reported the highest rates of sexual violence (27 per cent), followed by currently married women (13 per cent), and by unmarried women who had an intimate partner (12 per cent). Women who had never been married reported the lowest rates of sexual violence (3 per cent).
Husbands and intimate partners were the most commonly reported perpetrators of sexual violence (71 per cent).
The previous KDHS 2014 showed similar findings, with 17.4 per cent of employed women reporting sexual violence, compared with 7.7 per cent of unemployed women. The survey before that—KDHS 2009—painted a different picture. Women who were not educated and had no income experienced the highest rates of sexual and gender-based violence. The higher rates of violence in 2009 could be associated with the post-election violence during the 2007 elections.
There was a shift in the subsequent 2014 and 2022 KDHS surveys, which suggests new vulnerabilities among women with an income.
Why did women who were educated and employed report higher levels of sexual violence?
According to Clayton Edwin Opiyo, a public health and advocacy expert and program officer with PATH, because the Sexual Offences Act was signed into law in 2010, women respondents in the KDHS 2014, especially those who were educated and economically empowered, were more aware of sexual and gender-based violence, and were, therefore, more likely to report having experienced it than their counterparts who were less educated and less economically empowered.
“The increased rates among this particular cohort can be attributed to increased awareness of what SGBV is as stipulated in the law that exists and, of course, increased incidences,” he said.
If you break down the statistics into the different forms of SGBV, the majority of the abuse—physical, emotional, and economic—is perpetrated by intimate partners who are well-known to the victims.
With this in mind, the 2022 KDHS survey that was conducted during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic—when most couples were working from home—saw increased cases of GBV as women were spending more time with their abusers, leading to increased tensions in the home and giving rise to what the UN identified as the shadow pandemic; the intensity of GBV increased during this period. Globally, violence against women increased to record levels following lockdowns to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Education and economic empowerment have been key to reducing the vulnerability of women to gender-based violence.
Education plays a role as a preventive factor by helping girls and women build self-esteem and assertiveness and acquire critical thinking skills that enable them to identify and resist situations that make them vulnerable to GBV, report incidents and seek support thus empowering them to advocate for their rights and navigate potential risks. Additionally, it equips them with the skills and knowledge necessary for economic empowerment, which enhances their financial independence. This is essential for women to have control over their lives and escape abusive relationships.
Economic empowerment also reduces women’s exposure to situations where they might be coerced or exploited, because women who have their own income and resources are less likely to be economically dependent on others, including potential perpetrators. Moreover, it challenges the traditional gender roles and power imbalances within relationships and society. Ideally, with more women contributing to the economy, there is a shift in gender norms which could lead to a more equitable distribution of power, promoting healthier associations and relationships within society.
Why women are afraid to leave
Nevertheless, KDHS data shows that educated and economically empowered women are vulnerable to GBV. It is not uncommon for women who are educated and financially independent to remain in an abusive relationship. It is also not uncommon for such women to leave and then return.
The reasons why women return to abusive relationships are extremely complex and have less to do with the content of the woman’s character and more to do with the effects of abuse.
Most women are afraid to leave because they are afraid of the stigma associated with divorce, and the fact that the abuser often has all of the economic and social standing and complete control over the family finances. Other barriers include having dependent children, not being employed outside of the home, possessing no property that is solely theirs, and lacking sole access to cash or bank and credit accounts as these may be jointly registered with their abusers. For these reasons, it is very likely that many of these women would experience a decline in living standards and security of life for themselves and their children if they were to leave their abusive partner.
For instance, Mercy—who has been married for 12 years and has three children with her husband—attempted to leave, but he threatened to kill her if she did. While he stopped the physical abuse, he continues to psychologically abuse her.
In addition to fearing for her life, she worries that having been giving her husband money to invest for the family, she will lose everything they have built together and at 43 years old, she is afraid it is too late for her to start her life afresh. Mercy is also afraid of the stigma faced by divorced women. In her culture, if she divorced and died before remarrying, she would be buried at the edge of her father’s home, an indication that she no longer belonged and was unwanted.
Lessons from World Bank Impact Evaluation, published in 2014, noted that while economic empowerment programmes may reduce GBV by increasing women’s bargaining power and ability to leave abusive relationships, “There are also risks that increased empowerment could threaten household patriarchies and exacerbate violence.”
This suggests that women who are educated and earn an income are perceived as a threat to the existing gender roles and dominant patriarchal system, leading to new vulnerabilities for women.
While progress has been made in educating women and providing opportunities for them to pursue careers, deep-rooted gender and patriarchal norms and roles perpetuate power imbalances and toxic masculinity, putting women at more risk of sexual and gender-based violence.
Women who were married or divorced had the highest rates of sexual violence (26 per cent), with the perpetrators being current husbands or intimate partners. While no data can be linked to religious teachings on relations with specificity on the aspect of submission for women in partnerships or marriage, the different perceptions about what it means have provided leeway for perpetrators to act with impunity, creating a culture of silence and fear among survivors.
According to Clayton Opiyo, the public health and advocacy expert, more needs to be done at the household and community level to address GBV through social and local structures such as chiefs and “nyumba kumi” in rural areas, and neighbourhood WhatsApp groups and church groups in urban areas.
Additionally, GBV should be integrated into the curriculum, especially in life skills training for school-going children, and in institutions of higher learning.
Opiyo added that there should be information-sharing sessions for all genders so that people who could be potential perpetrators or victims understand the legal and health consequences of SGBV at the societal level.
Investing in comprehensive data collection and research on sexual violence could form the basis of long-term intervention on sexual violence among vulnerable women with these background characteristics (married women with an income), who as a result of the public’s assumptions continue to have their rights violated, by ensuring that we identify patterns, understand underlying causes and propose evidence-based interventions. Moreover, data should be used to guide policy-making, monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions.
Additionally, strengthening support services and referral pathways for survivors of sexual violence like medical care, counselling and legal aid is essential as an intervention, lastly, there is a need for awareness campaigns in affluent communities to address sexual violence, dispel myths, challenge survivor-blaming attitudes and promote a culture of consent and respect.
This story has been produced with the support of The Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP).