BY Stephanie Maira
Tsvetislava Koleva for Fine Acts
These have been trying times for Kenyan women. While the year started on a record low with the uptick in femicide in the country, this is not the first time that being a woman in Kenya has been such a danger. Back in 2014, the “My Dress My Choice” campaign started following multiple cases of women being assaulted due to their choice of clothing. I remember feeling particularly at risk while walking down Moi Avenue, in my little black dress on my way to a night out with friends. Don’t get me wrong, I have always felt at risk walking down that road, it is well known for phone and purse snatching incidents but that time, it was different. The men seemed to stare a little longer, they had been empowered by their counterparts who were caught on video assaulting women. I remember hastening my steps just to get to the “nicer” side of the central business district. That night in 2014, another video surfaced of a young woman assaulted by public vehicle conductors because she dared to wear a skirt while in a matatu. That could have very easily been me.
10 years later, the situation is even more dire. Women’s lives are being snuffed out as if they mean nothing. Young or old, age doesn’t matter. It certainly didn’t matter for Rachel Njoroge, 55 and Rita Waeni, 20 years old. Before the end of January 2024, there were 16 known cases of femicide that had happened. This sparked the #EndFemicideKE campaign and march on the 27th of January that united feminists and allies nationwide. As women and men chanted in the streets of Kenya, you couldn’t help but feel like there was some hope on the horizon, but that was short-lived. Male onlookers were recorded threatening the march attendees. The assaults and killings didn’t stop. A woman was again assaulted and nearly stabbed because the assailants did not like that she dressed “like a man”. The leaders of the country did and continue to do very little to show their support for the cause, some even claiming that it is young women’s obsession with money which puts them in dangerous situations.
This seems like a rant…and I assure you, it is. Women are tired. As a Kenyan woman, I am tired. I am tired of being on high alert every time I leave the house and when I walk past a group of men. I am tired of having to fake niceties with men who just won’t leave me alone for fear of them harming me. I am tired of reading the countless victim-blaming comments under GBV posts online claiming that the victims “should have been more careful.”
This is the 21st century, women can’t keep living like this. I can’t keep living like this. Only when gender-based violence is no longer normalised in Kenya, will women have the freedom to be unashamedly themselves.