Breaking Patterns

By Stella Ojuok, University of Washington, Kenya

Stella works with the DREAMS Innovation Challenge project of the University of Washington, which increases access to PrEP for adolescent girls and young women through public sector clinics in Kenya and aims to promote voluntary HIV testing among their partners.

Growing up, I never questioned a woman’s worth in a relationship. I was surrounded by very strong women who seemed to me just as empowered as men, my mum being one of them. I went through school not feeling much of a difference between boys and girls.

Then I landed my current job. One of my duties is to capture the experiences of health workers who provide PrEP services (the pill you take before having sex, to prevent HIV transmission). At first, I reported many success stories, and then I started noticing a disturbing pattern. Quite a number of women who were started on PrEP due to their feeling at risk from their husbands’ lifestyles were later opting out because of the same men. It seemed they were doing so at the request of their husbands. Some had even been forced to stop, after being verbally threatened or even physically assaulted.

How could it be that women would not dare to protect themselves against HIV infection, out of fear of their spouses? ‘’Is this what marriage is like?’’ I asked myself as I documented incident after incident. “Does getting married mean putting ourselves second? Risking it all to ‘make it work’? Is marriage worth such a price?” These questions popped into my mind as I tried to understand this scary trend.

I am a product of a very successful marriage. I believe in marriage as much as I do gender equity. I also believe that women have the right to be safe from intimidation or violence at the hands of their intimate partners. Surely it should not be women’s responsibility to make relationships work, especially when doing so might cost them their lives.

Because we were able to highlight this worrying trend, women in the program who experience intimate partner violence are now referred to services offering prevention and appropriate responses. I also started an active campaign for young women, on self-worth in relationships. My first stop was “Sauti Skika” (amplify voices), and yes it was a success!

But this is only the first step: we must also work with men to revise their views of masculinity and mobilize them to stop trying to control women but instead treat them as equals.

All photos provided by Stella Ojuok.