Is the Kenyan Boy Child Excluded in the Gender Equality Agenda?

Is the Kenyan Boy Child Excluded in the Gender Equality Agenda?

Over the recent past, I have been doing a small research on the boy child challenge in the country. Every time I have participated in any program involving children, I keenly observe the differences in the young girls’ and boys’ presentations to find where discrepancies arise in the equality cycle.

I have noted that girls, from a young age, have a greater confidence than the boys. Here in Nairobi for example, young girls are quite outspoken than their boy counterparts of the same age especially when it comes to presentations involving both genders.

This has translated into the work environment both in the formal and informal sectors. Women have grown in confidence and can stand in the way of men. Surprisingly enough, they sometimes work better than men.

It is usual to find female touts and drivers in our public transport sector today. The good thing about this change of guard is the stamina of these female creams. The female touts and drivers are mostly polite and at the same time stern when on duty. You can’t mishandle them with the old chauvinistic mindset that they are the weaker sex and cannot stand to face you. You could be wrong.

Women are nowadays the force of society and there are as many of them in the corporate world as their male counterparts. All this has been courtesy of efforts geared towards women’s empowerment.

Women empowerment has taken center stage in Kenya since the turn of the 21st century. This was a few years after the fourth conference on the status of women held in Beijing in the year 1995 which was organized to strategize measures to be put in place to ensure equal access and full participation of women in governance and inclusion in major decision-making.

The main aim of the increased women’s participation in economic and political sectors as lobbied for by the conference was to help attain transparency and ensure accountable governance for sustainable development.

For this reason, we have seen a recent increased number of women elected to political positions and in other major public sector appointments. The constitution today demands that one-third of all public appointments be specifically set aside for women.

Discrimination against women has declined for that matter. This has raised concerns that it is done so at the expense of the boy child who is being slowly dragged into the pit of the forgotten ones.

In a 2015 report by the National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC) on the status of the boy child in Kenya, I noted a claim made by one of the respondents from Embu over the boy child discrimination. The respondent observed that all agencies have concentrated on the girl child to the level of making the boy child an “avocado.”

His/her concerns were that some of the boys have been made to leave schooling in favour of the girls to have an education. Once the girl child is educated, she then gets married by outsiders due to the simple fact that there are no learned boys from those villages and communities to marry this new breed of educated girls. This is quite poignant.

In place of the above, I think absentee fatherhood is becoming a major challenge overlooked in the boy-child discrimination scenario. I mean, both girls and boys need to learn from their parents. Whereas girls spend more time on average with their mothers, boys on the other hand are spending less and less time with their fathers which exposes them to immoral societal practices at an early age.

This is in contravention of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child which demands that family and parents should provide the primary serene environment for child growth. It could thus be wise if we began to encourage proper parental care as a measure of achieving the gender equality and equity agenda.

boy child
The boy child faces pressure from within and without, and this has already adversely affected many of them. Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

Throughout the country, I have noticed that society is at the primary level of encouraging boy-child discrimination without realizing it. The advent of the bodaboda (motorcycles) business is chief in this. It will surprise us that most of the motorcycles driven around by the young boys are not even theirs.

Older men in society own those motorcycles and only lend them out to the young boys at a commission hence introducing them to the snares of the informal sector at a very early age. The effect is that those young boys get hooked on the quick cash which in turn encourages even more of them to drop out of schools.

Some months ago I happened to participate in a discussion about the role of men and women in society and I was surprised to learn how society perceives the male gender. The men are expected to start taking up responsibilities very early on irrespective of whether they are ready to or not.

In some communities for instance, you are expected to marry immediately after circumcision and start taking care of your young ones in the case of absentee fathers or a late father. This means some young men end up giving up their education and personal development at the expense of their young siblings – which is inevitable due to social and governance failures.

In other instances, men are not supposed to talk when abused at whatever level. Women have been empowered so well to a level where the smallest assaults are persecuted in courts which is a huge development in gender justice affairs.

However, the societal thought that men are to persevere amid suffering has made some of them fear speaking up when they perceive injustice being committed to them. This is primarily because they may end up being ridiculed now that the patriarchal system has always placed the male gender on a better chance of inheritance, power and leadership roles since time immemorial.

Notwithstanding, times have changed a lot, especially since the turn of the century and will change even further in the coming years. Both genders are as vulnerable as the other and we might completely close our eyes to the misery of the boy child simply because of some stereotypes passed on to us by the older generations which is disastrous.

Today’s paradox is that times have changed, yet the greatest problem facing us is that we are not changing ourselves. There is a need to adapt to the changing times and appreciate the reversal of roles in modern society.

My conclusion is that the boy child has been excluded in a way. Only that the exclusion is a result of the greater cultural and family beliefs passed to us by the older generation. Others are a result of laxity in parenting and perhaps a mindset among the boy-child fraternity that society has already cast lots on them.

In other words, they have condemned themselves even before being condemned by society itself. Yes, society sometimes takes part in the convictions and all we need is to empower the neglected boychild just a little bit and things will be even, unless our wish is to see him get lost.

We can change the narrative if we can focus on the boy child empowerment with the same energy we have on the girl child empowerment. From now on, we need to understand that no gender has a level ground as has been perceived before. All genders have challenges and are at risk of facing problems as the other, especially in this age and era. Inclusivity in the gender equality and equity agenda is not an option, but a necessity for all.

End

Copyright @ 2018.

Geoffrey Ndege

Geoffrey Ndege

Geoffrey Ndege is the Editor and topical contributor for the Daily Focus. He writes in the areas of Science, Manufacturing, Technology, Innovation, Governance, Management and International Emerging Issues. For featuring, promotions or support, reach out to us at info@dailyfocus.co.ke
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