| dc.description.abstract | This study sought to investigate social factors influencing boy child perception on gender
based violence in day secondary schools in Kiambu District, Kiambu County, Kenya.
One of the potentially worst challenges facing the world today is Gender Based Violence
(GBV). GBV has emerged as a salient topic in the human security community; it has
been framed principally with respect to violence against women and girls, particularly
sexual violence. Gender Based Violence in Kenya is vastly widespread though, people
remain silent over it because of being perceived as part of the culture. The government
has taken several steps in addressing Gender Based Violence and particularly violence
against women, this efforts have in effect made the male gender be ignored despite being
perceived to be the perpetrators of GBV. That has resulted from the assumption that men
are already empowered despite the fact that there is no tangible evidence to support this
kind of thinking. These steps contributed to the reduction of the reported GBV cases by
11.1% between 2005 and 2009. However, Economic survey report 2011 pointed out that
Kiambu and Mombasa counties make up some of the worst hit counties in the country
where violence towards men is rampant and the trend of cases reported is increasing.
Rampant increase of GBV in Kiambu District, particularly against men, portrays a
complete lack of authority and power in the family front. A man‟s position in the family
has been absolutely compromised before women and the children by his status. In spite of
the many initiatives that presently exist to address domestic violence in general, Kenyan
communities particularly in Kiambu District are yet to significantly reduce the cases of
GBV where it is so prevalent and has forced many families to break. This study sought to
investigate whether gender role expectations, social cultural norms, family relations and
substance abuse influence the boy child perception of gender based violence in day
secondary schools in Kiambu District, Kiambu County, Kenya. The study employed a
descriptive survey research design. The target population for the study was 360
comprising of principals, deputy principals and teachers from 18 different schools. The
study targeted 5400 students from all the 18 district day secondary schools in the district.
The study employed Mugenda and Mugenda formula in coming up with a sample size of
394 respondents. It adopted the use of questionnaires in primary data collection. The
study generated both qualitative and quantitative data where quantitative data was coded
and entered into SPSS and analyzed using descriptive statistics where presentation was
done using frequency tables and figures. It concluded that gender role expectations
provide structures relating to the transition period which tend to be enforced through
abusive tactics such as bullying and gender-based harassments in especially mixed
schools. Bride price is part of the patriarchal establishment in the society which breeds to
more inequality between women and men and therefore further placing women in a
subordinate position. Perpetrators of gender based violence in homes are mostly abusive
men who as children witnessed parental violence or experienced child abuse. The family
plays a fundamental part in promoting violent behaviors and that there is violent
behaviors among adolescents and/or children from violent homes at school. Finally, the
study concluded that substance abuse results to impaired judgments; most of the drunk
parents reported to have HIV/AIDS perpetrate gender based violence through sex | en_US |
