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.
“[People] living on less than 2.15 U.S. dollars a day in rural regions added up to around 10.6 million, while around 1.7 million extremely poor people resided in urban areas.” (Statista)
“Poverty remains high with one in three Kenyans (15.9 million people) monetarily poor. Half of all Kenyans (23.4 million of which 11.7 million are children) are multi-dimensionally poor lacking access to basic services such as healthcare, safe drinking water, sanitation, nutrition and housing.” (UNICEF)
“Over half (54%) do not have drinking water on the premises and must travel to collect it. Sixty-nine percent of those who collect the drinking water are women age 15 or older.” (KNBS)
“Women in the poorest households have 5.3 children on average, compared to 2.7 among women in the richest households.” (KNBS)
“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)
“In 2020, for every 10 victims of human trafficking detected globally, about four were adult women and about two were girls. Most of the detected victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation (91 per cent) are women.” (UN Women)
“Four in ten women who have ever had a husband or intimate partner (41%) have ever experienced economic, psychological/emotional, physical, or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent husband/intimate partner.” (KDHS)
“Similar to trends in teenage pregnancy and FGM, the protective effect of educating women and girls was evident in trends in gender-based violence, as women with more than secondary education experienced less violence at 23%, as compared to 47% among those with primary education.” (KDHS)
1 in 3 women worldwide will experience violence in their lifetime. (WHO)
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. (Jacobs Foundation)
In Kenya, 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)
86% of children in Kenya attend primary school, while only 49% attend secondary school. This includes high school as well as some technical schools that are accessible after primary school. (KNBS)
Among women who ever went to school, only 1.6% in rural Kenya completed university. (2019, KNBS)
Among the population age three and up, only 20.5% of women in rural Kenya completed high school. (2019, KNBS)
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 (as of 2003), but families must pay for secondary school as well as textbooks, uniforms, and teachers’ salaries. The cost to send a child to school 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.
Teenage pregnancy in Kenya declines as the level of education increases, from 38% for women with no education to 5% for women with more than secondary education. It also declines as household wealth increases, from 21% in the lowest wealth quintile to 7% in the highest wealth quintile. (KNBS)
On average, urban women give birth for the first time two years later than rural women (22.0 years versus 19.9 years). (2022 KDHS)
62% of women aged 20 to 24 years who were first married or in union before age 18 had no education as compared to 8% who had at least a secondary education. (UNESCO)
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)
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)
Dorcas and her son Emmanuel
In Kenya, girls are more likely to drop out of school or not pursue an education compared to boys because of factors such as poverty, unsafe learning environments, and the high cost of education. Other challenges are the burden of household chores and family responsibilities assigned to girls, which are rooted in societal attitudes and cultural beliefs around gender roles. All these factors increase the risk of early pregnancy, sexual abuse, or early marriage of girls.
At Neema, we provide young women with education as well as trauma-informed counseling and discipleship in order to help them avoid these abuses and social problems. When they are no longer vulnerable, a world of opportunities becomes realistic.
