| dc.description.abstract | Kenya‘s public transport sector is gender imbalanced, with up to 90% of the participants in the industry from investors to employees being predominantly male. While the Kenya constitution calls for up to 33% participation of women in all sectors of the economy, this is largely ignored in this sector. The study sought to analyze the factors influencing gender violence against women in public transport sector in Nairobi County Kenya. The objectives of this study were: to establish how grooming of women exposes them to gender violence; to determine how the structure and capacity of the vehicles used in public transport enhances gender violence against women; to determine the influence of poor governance on gender violence against women; to establish how women empowerment influences the reduction of gender violence against women and to establish the role of the conduct of public transport drivers and touts (makanga) on gender violence against women in public transport in Nairobi. The study adopted mixed method approach collecting both qualitative and quantitative data using questionnaires, interview schedule and document analysis. The study sampled matatu crews, commuters, SACCO officials, Traffic commandant and director of city transport. Purposive sampling technique was used to select SACCO officials, director of city transport and Base Commandant. Researcher designed self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from the commuters and matatu crew while interview schedule was used to collect qualitative data from Traffic Commandant, Director of City Transport Directorate and SACCO officials. The instruments were pretested in Rongai route using six participants and a Cronbach alpha value of reliability = 0.757 was obtained for the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the quantitative data by the help of SPSS software version 20 while thematic content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data from the interviews. The study found that victims of gender based harassment in the matatu sector are always dressed in provocative manner (42.5%), that random sitting plan in the matatus (55.4%) and congestion (58.9%) encourages gender violence against women, the type of music played in public transport vehicles encourage gender based violence against women (60.4%). Similarly, policies governing the public transport sector are not effective in reducing gender based violence against women (54.0%), Saccos and matatu owners do not implement policies to curb gender based violence against women (66.8%), traffic police department and other transport agencies do not implement laws to curb gender based violence (58.3%) and that the matatu owners/SACCOS do not conduct regular inspection to ensure the matatus are hospitable for women (43.6%). The study also found that women are not able to speak up against violence meted on them in public transport vehicles (54.4%), low economic status makes women vulnerable to gender related violence in the public transport vehicles (62.4%) and that gender inequality in the public transport sector was found to encourage violence against women (57.5%). The study concludes that provocative dressing is a factor which promotes gender based violence as well as congestion in public transport and nature of seats and structure. Policies in the public transport sector are an issue in effectively reducing gender violence against women while women are not able to speak and remain silent as gender violence is perpetrated against them thus a great level of harassment against women by matatu crew due to considerable lack of respect towards the female commuters. | en_US |
