Extreme material poverty in rural Kenya disproportionately affects women, leading to their victimization. This includes prostitution, trafficking, unplanned pregnancies, child marriage, indentured servitude, inability to continue formal education, lack of employment, emotional trauma, and other forms of abuse.
As of 2015-16, 38.8% of the population in rural areas in Kenya are living in poverty. (World Bank)
About 1 out of 3 people in Kenya live below the international poverty line. 35.6% of the population lives with less than US$ 1.90 per day and 63.7% of the population with less than US$ 3.20 (World Bank)
Vulnerability is how well one can absorb a shock. If a disaster happens and a person does not have economic margin, he or she is categorized as vulnerable. Those in rural areas of Kenya are both significantly more poor and more vulnerable, so when Covid-19 began spreading, many of our students’ families were unable to access work because of lockdown, and therefore began going hungry. (World Bank)
Poor households are prone to cut spending on food, education, and health if there is an adverse shock such as flooding, a poor crop yield, etc. They do not have financial resilience to avoid the long-term implications of a shock. (World Bank)
“Kenyan women are disproportionately affected by poverty during the core productive and reproductive years, especially if they experienced a marital dissolution…. Kenyan women are more likely to live in poor households than men.... women who are separated, divorced or widowed are more likely to be poor (compared to men), face higher prevalence rates of physical violence (compared to other women) and are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.” (World Bank)
“Off-farm diversification has been important for poverty reduction in Kenya. Households whose agricultural income was supplemented by non-agricultural activities, mainly in small-scale services, account for 33.5% of the poverty reduction, the highest share.” (World Bank, Kenya Poverty and Gender Assessment 2015-2016)
“Sexual and other forms of violence against women have devastating consequences including injuries and serious physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health problems, including sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and unplanned pregnancies.” (HRW)
“Poverty, dysfunctional families and a lack of access to secondary education force children to seek work in urban areas, where they are often exploited by traffickers…. Kenya is a source, destination and transit country for trafficking. It has been in the U.S. Department of State’s Tier 2 watch list for three years, indicating that it is not doing enough to combat trafficking.” (Reuters)
“In 2018, for every 10 victims of human trafficking detected globally, about five were adult women and two were girls. Most of the detected victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation (92%) are females.” (UN Women)
“In one study in Kenya, 58 of every 100 school children in Kenya have been sexually harassed while 29% boys and 24% girls reported to have been forced into unwanted sex.” (CICE Hiroshima University)
This is often due to factors such as a lack of funds to send all kids to school (boys get preference), early marriage for girls under the age of 18, and teenage pregnancy.
(Getting an education in rural Kenya: Findings based on the Kenya Financial Diaries)
“Each year of secondary education may reduce the likelihood of marrying before the age of 18 by five percentage points or more…” (Educating Girls, Ending Child Marriage)
1 in 5 adolescent girls (19%) have not completed primary school; the majority of these girls (66%) reside in rural areas and are in the lowest two quintiles by income or financial status (58%) (Shujazz INc and UNICEF Girls Barometer)
Despite progress in education as a whole, gender disparity remains a challenge as 16% of women in Kenya still lack basic literacy skills, compared with 9% of men. (UNESCO)
1 in 3 women worldwide will experience violence in their lifetime. (WHO)
60% of people experiencing chronic hunger are women and girls. (UN Women)
Women own less than 20% of the world’s land yet produce the majority of the world’s food. (Tearfund)
“Kenya is among the few African countries with gender inequality in formal inheritance rights, for example with respect to the Law of Succession Act.” (World Bank, Kenya Poverty and Gender Assessment 2015-2016)
The failure to promote and retain girls in secondary education is one factor negatively affecting the slow progress in women’s literacy.
Primary school is free (since 2003), but families must pay for secondary school as well as textbooks, uniforms, and teachers’ salaries. The cost to send a child to secondary school is on average $1.30/day. A year’s schooling is ~$500 US which isn’t possible for a family making less than $2 a day. And when children attend school, they are not contributing to the family’s income. These costs and perceived losses make it difficult for families to justify sending a child to school. (Educate a Child)
“Before COVID-19 struck, around 34 million secondary school-aged girls in sub-Saharan Africa were being denied a full education and an estimated 24% of adolescent girls and young women (15–24 years) in the region were not in education, training or employed, compared to 14.6% of young men.” (UNAIDS)
“Every child aged 0-5 years reduces women’s probability to be in the labor force by over 2 percent.” (World Bank)
The enrollment rate in secondary education is much lower for poor as well as rural Kenyan populations. (World Bank)
(UNICEF Report about the impact of Covid on adolescent girls in Kenya)
About a quarter of girls (23%) said they often or sometimes did not have access to food at all during the pandemic.
43% of girls told us they had a first-hand experience of gender-based discrimination targeting them, or girls they know, in their professional or personal lives, or in education.
In Shujaaz Inc’s 2020 national survey, a quarter of adolescent mothers reported feeling that their communities disapprove of them, and at least one in seven young mothers (13%) reported being denied access to support from families or communities, to support services, and to social activities. In fact, the principal associations with adolescent mothers among young Kenyans are negative; ranging from ideas that all young mothers are a ‘family burden’ or ‘irresponsible’.
A concerning 78% of adolescent girls reported that they occasionally experience signs of depression or of severe stress, for example: feeling down, depressed or hopeless, feeling like a failure, experiencing sudden feelings of fear or panic, or having suicidal thoughts.
Medical factors are significant in reducing educational opportunities for girls: Inadequate infrastructure and poor guidelines for policy implementation, as well as the prevalence of HIV and AIDS, have prevented girls from accessing education.
The stigma associated with pregnancy can be a barrier for girls who have children of their own, making it harder for them to stay in school.
Child marriage often occurs because of poverty, tradition, and gender inequality.
23% of women aged 20 to 24 years in Kenya were first married or in union before age 18. (UNICEF)
“Each year of secondary education may reduce the likelihood of marrying before the age of 18 by five percentage points or more in many countries.” Every day, 41,000 girls marry before they are 18 years old. That’s 15 million girls every year. (World Bank)
In the last 5 years, climate change has caused a rise in child marriages in Kenya. In Kenya, climate change has caused increased drought, erratic weather patterns, a plague of locusts, and depleted grassland and livestock. To cope, desperate families are increasingly pulling their daughters from school and marrying them off in exchange for dowries. (TIME)
“12 years of education for every girl would result in a 64% drop in child marriage. Secondary education also helps to prevent early pregnancy.” (Malala)
“In Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, a huge number of girls are still subject to child marriage every year, and 23%, 31% and 34% in each country respectively have been married off before they reach 18.” (Girls Not Brides)
In Kenya, girls are more likely to drop out of school than boys because of factors such as poverty, insecure learning environments, the high cost of education, and long distances from education institutions. These factors also aid in the risks of early pregnancies and sexual abuse. Other challenges are the burden of household chores and family responsibilities assigned to girls. Societal attitudes and cultural beliefs around gender roles also become a barrier to education.
At Neema, we provide a holistic approach to education in order to help young women avoid these abuses and social problems. When they are no longer vulnerable, a world of opportunities becomes realistic.
