Gender stereotypes

Gender stereotypes, cultural socialization and existing power relations have hindered achievement of gender equality perpetuating the notion of male superiority and insubordination of women and girls. This is worse in rural areas where communities are guided by discriminative cultural practices that fuel violence.

Busia County is highly patriarchal with distinct gender roles for men, women, girls and boys. In fact, the like in many patriarchal communities, Busia practices discriminative cultural norms that fuel and condone violence against women and girls. In fact, the pain of a woman or girl benefits the farther or husband. Many examples attest to this: for instance, when a husband assaults his wife by knocking out her teeth, the man will be obliged to pay a cow to the woman’s father and brothers and if a woman is physically assaulted and escapes to the parent’s home, she is given food and a live chicken and sent back to her husband (The presents are meant to appease the perpetrator) The worse is when a man never hits his wife in her life time, he must do it when she dies before burial. Such cultural fuel violence against women. Today in Busia fathers greatly benefit from their daughters being sexually assaulted since perpetrators pay them to deny the victim justice.

During REEP trainings for men on gender equality, cultural norms that fuel violence and how men can deconstruct negative masculinity, men went on defense and fiercely protected the status quo. At this point REEP decided to stop presenting statistics and bring the reality home. We invited survivors of all forms of violence and discrimination to tell their stories live. It was the first time we saw the men listening with lowered heads. The silence in the room was palpable as each woman took ten minutes to tell her story. Some with visible scars and missing body parts. After this we went to plenary and it was the men’s turn to respond.

Mr. Saya Achola-Male Champion Said                                                                                                                                       “If that girl with missing limbs was my daughter, I would go out of my way and hunt him down to the end of the world and kill him with my bare hands. How can anyone do such a thing to a fellow human being? He asked and walked out maybe to cry.”

Mr. David Adenyi Said

“We cannot throw away our daughters. They are also human just like the sons. They too deserve everything. They should be given land. I will give my daughters land so that their husbands know that they are not homeless. They can go back to their land where even their male relatives cannot evict them.

At the end of our engagement with men it had been unanimously agreed that woman and girls deserve better and that GBU was wrong. Some of the participants even started naming people in the community whose daughters had taken very good care of them in their old age.