Abstract:
Violence against women and girls continues to be a global epidemic that kills, tortures, and maims - physically, psychologically, sexually, and economically. It is one of the most pervasive of human rights violations, denying women and girl's equality, security, dignity, self-worth, and their right to enjoy fundamental freedoms. This paper focuses specifically on domestic violence - the most prevalent yet relatively hidden and ignored form of violence against women and girls. This paper is thus based on a study carried out to establish the factors contributing to domestic violence among women in low-income residential areas in Kenya. More specifically, the study sought to: analyze the demographic characteristics of women and their husbands included in the survey, establish and describe characteristics of domestic violence and its ravages and identify factors leading to domestic violence in the low-income residential areas. A descriptive research design was adopted. Data was collected using a questionnaire, which was administered to women and girls found in households in selected Kisumu low-income residential areas. Simple random sampling technique was applied in picking the respondents in each Household. The sample size was 90. Each of the six selected low-income residential areas in Kisumu provided 15 women and girls for the research. The salient findings of the study are that majority of women are experiencing domestic violence, they are abused mostly by people known to them and more so their husbands, they are mostly verbally abused, most of the women abused are of low educational background, are housewives and entirely depend on their husbands for their survival. The study also observed economic hardships and incidences of extramarital affairs contributes largely to the case of domestic violence in low income residential areas in Kenya. It is, therefore, the recommendation of this paper that efforts should be made by the government to ensure that women in Kenya are economically empowered so that they do not rely in men who take advantage and continually abuse them. Furthermore, it is suggested that stiffer punishments should be mated to perpetrators of domestic violence.