As it is, according to government data, more than 47 percent of women in Kenya experience physical or sexual violence, compared with an average of around 30 percent across almost half the countries in the world (a sample of 81 nations).
Our country’s higher prevalence of violence against women has prompted studies such as one in Meru County in 2018 that asked men to record their view of their social status, on a ladder of 1 to 10 from poor to wealthy, and the degree of conflict in their relationships in the past year.
The study found that the lower men perceived themselves to be on the social status ladder, the more likely they were to have been in violent conflicts with their partner.
But at the end of 2019, unemployment in the world’s largest economies was running at three to five percent of the labour force, whereas, according to the World Bank, Kenya’s unemployment was 7.2 percent.
So, many Kenyan men are likely to feel less valuable because we run a society where our CEOs earn over Sh1 million a month and many of our men earn less than Sh20,000 – in short, one of the most unequal in the world.
