Ninety percent of women in Kenya receive harassment and nuisance calls, a new report released by Truecaller shows.
The report dubbed Truecaller Insights: The Impact of Harassment Calls& SMS For Women in India, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt & Kenya shows that 1 0ut of 5 women in the country receive the sexual or inappropriate calls/ SMS.
According to the research, 47% of these calls originate from prison while the origin of 53% of them remains unknown.
Eleven percent of women in the country consider this as harassment.
Conversely, the report shows that women in urban areas including Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru and Kiambu are the most vulnerable to this kind of harassment.
According to Truecaller’s report, 53% of the women in Kenya have responded to the harassment with anger, 42% feel offended, 30% feel irritated, 27% feel troubled while another 26% are scared.
Worryingly, in Kenya, only 2 out of 10 women take action against the perpetrators compared to 6 out of 10 in Egypt, Colombia and Brazil and 7 out of 10 in India.
“More than half of all women take action against harassment calls. An exception to this was Kenya, where there’s a very low rate of women taking action. It is difficult to pinpoint why this is the case, but interviews with Kenyan women revealed some information about local attitudes,” reads the report.
According to the report, Kenyan women are reluctant to confront harassment due to lack of faith in authorities which are perceived not to have the will to stand against bullies.
