Womankind in Kenya

Womankind’s work in Kenya aims to:

• Eliminate and raise awareness of violence against women

• Increase women’s political participation and raise women’s voices in decision-making

To achieve this Womankind and our partners are addressing the underlying causes of discrimination against women in two main ways.

Eliminating and raising awareness on violence against women

The situation

Violence against women is a serious and widespread problem in Kenya, which is made worse by the Kenya’s traditionally patriarchal society, which is ambivalent towards issues of domestic violence, and customary laws that fail to recognise women’s rights. Domestic violence has increased steadily in frequency and severity over recent years and during the post-election crisis in 2008 sexual violence became systematic.

• one in five girls were coerced/forced into their first sexual encounter

• 43% of women aged 15-49 have experienced some form of physical gender-based physical in their lifetime

What Womankind is doing

We are working with our partners to:

• Educate women on their rights and enhance the capacity of women and service providers to respond to violence against women

• Mitigate sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in the province of Kibera, Nairobi, by strengthening support systems and services delivery

Raising women’s voice in decision making

The situation

Women make up half of Kenya’s voting population yet they have been consistently under-represented in political institutions and have had little say in the formulation of public policy choices and priorities.

• Only 10.4% of legislators in Kenya are women

• Out of 3,800 councillors, women represent 9.3%

Women are discouraged from political participation for many reasons, including lack of resources and the male dominated local political environment which is often characterised by corruption, violence and intimidation.

What Womankind is doing

We are working with our partners to:

• increase women political participation at the local and national level, in order to include socio economic and political agendas of women in decision-making arenas

How you can help

£123 could be used to support a legal counsel for one month to offer legal aid to 87 women

£109 could be used to support a counsellor for one month to offer emotional support to about 24 women victims and survivors of violence

£150 could help a potential woman candidate train agents to help her monitor elections to ensure her ballot is safeguarded during vote counting

You can help by giving today.