A DISCURSIVE SPECTRUM: The Narrative of Kenya’s ‘Neglected’ Boy Child

Abstract

In this article, I examine a narrative that on the surface could be backlash to gender equality efforts: that after years of policy attention to girls, Kenya’s “boy child” has been neglected. Through a content analysis of Kenyan online newspaper texts spanning the past two decades, I chart the evolution of this discourse, finding that it was present as early as 2000, intensified around 2010, and began to produce concrete actions around 2013. I argue that the narrative is a reaction to expanded women’s rights, but not always in the sense of negative backlash. Some boy child claims-makers were indeed concerned with a decline in men’s power. However, others, mostly women, used the boy child narrative to redirect attention to issues that profoundly affect the well-being of women such as violence and the struggle to find a partner. These results point to the value of a discursive spectrum approach for analysis of potential backlash to gender equality as well as discussions around policy attention to boys and men.

In recent years, scholars have increasingly begun to study the question of backlash against gender equality, exploring the national contexts as well as transnational dynamics that foster such reaction (Corredor 2019; Korolczuk and Graff 2018; Paternotte and Kuhar 2017; Lodhia 2014). From Eastern Europe to Latin America, the global Right—largely comprised of religious and political figures and organizations—has been found to employ a “rhetorical counterstrategy” that seeks to discredit feminist ideas and policy proposals (Corredor 2019, 616). It is no coincidence that a backlash discourse has emerged as gender equality has advanced globally: a prerequisite for the formation of a countermovement is some level of success from the movement it is opposing (Corredor 2019; Verloo 2018).

Alongside this reaction to gender equality, tensions exist within the gender and development arena about how men should be involved, both as policy-makers and beneficiaries. A growing interest around incorporating men into gender programs accompanied the shift from the women in development approach to the gender and development approach in the 1990s (Chant and Gutmann 2000; Cornwall 2000). Although this stronger emphasis on gender relations theoretically opened up space for the greater involvement of men, the focus of gender programming has remained largely on girls’ and women’s empowerment, in part due to the rationale that this approach is “smart economics” (Chant 2016, 4). A parallel but distinct discourse runs in the Global North, as well as other regions such as the Caribbean, around how persistent gender inequality relates to negative outcomes for boys and men in various realms, including education, incarceration, and health (Noguera 2003; Cobbett and Younger 2012).

In this article, I explore one gender narrative that brings together these dynamics of backlash and concern for men: that after years of focus on the girl child, the “boy child” in Kenya has been forgotten. Specifically, I ask: what explains the emergence of this narrative of neglect in Kenya, and how does it relate to women’s changing social position? Applying content analysis to two decades of online newspaper texts, I examine the problems associated with the “neglected” boy child as well as the orientations of a wide range of claims-makers to gender equality. The findings present a complex picture. Groups, all arguing that the boy child has been forgotten, hold diverse views on gender equality, ranging from those who think gender equality efforts have been excessive to those who think there is much progress to be made.

These results point to the value of a broad study of both potential backlash to gender equality and policy attention to boys and men. This framework, which I call a discursive spectrum approach, starts with narratives in the public sphere to go beyond two opposing sides, pro- and anti-equality efforts, and reveals the concerns, goals, and social positioning of a range of discursive actors. The term spectrum is not meant to imply that all contested gender discourses will involve actors ranging in their views on gender equality. Instead, it indicates a stance that such a spectrum might exist and, with discourse as an entry point, allows variation in views to emerge.

CRISIS TENDENCIES AND POTENTIAL BACKLASH IN THE GENDER ORDER

Gender dynamics at every level of society, from the individual to the institutional, are never set in stone (Risman 2017). There are moments, however, when the gender order is particularly vulnerable to change. Connell (1987) referred to these moments as “crisis tendencies,” arguing that they stem from contradictions in various areas of gender relations: for example, men’s continued dominance in homes existing alongside the idea that men and women are equal as citizens. This theory—that changes in different arenas interact to shape the trajectories of the gender order as a whole—parallels Walby’s concept of a critical turning point, “an event that changes the trajectory of development onto a new path” (2009, 421). To Connell and Walby, these salient periods—crisis tendencies or critical turning points—represent a fork in the road, posing risk and opportunity for gender equality.

Indeed, history has shown that the path to a more gender equal society frequently meets with resistance. In recent years, explicitly “antigender” groups across the world have intensified their efforts to obstruct and dismantle policies aimed at gender and sexual equality (Corredor 2019). But, what if opposition takes the form of a discourse that is not tethered to a particular group? And furthermore, what if a discourse—such as the boy child debate—could be backlash to gender equality but, as yet, it is premature to classify it as such? In this case, a more expansive approach, one that moves beyond the dichotomy of movement and opposition, is particularly valuable. Frameworks put forward by feminist scholars to examine debates around social problems, largely in relation to the welfare state and policy, provide a useful foundation to help develop a discursive spectrum approach. I draw especially on Nancy Fraser’s concept of needs-talk, the “disputes about what exactly various groups of people really do need and about who should have the last word in such matters” (1990, 199). Rather than study the needs themselves, Fraser called for study of how people interpret needs. Her model highlights three key moments of struggle: establishing the need as a political concern, interpreting the need, and satisfying or denying the need. At each of these points, different groups, who have varying degrees of power and resources, jostle to establish their view on a particular social need as hegemonic. A more recent wave of feminist scholars have designed new frameworks to study discourse around social problems (Bacchi 2012; Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009). Using the narrative of Kenya’s neglected boy child, I build on these theories to develop a discursive spectrum approach, where language serves as an entry point to reveal the range and complexity of attitudes to gender equality.

MEN’S DISEMPOWERMENT AND PRIVILEGE IN KENYA

British colonial rule fundamentally disrupted and shaped gender relations in Kenya. With the arrival of wage work and formal education, underpinned by the colonial administration’s beliefs about men and women’s social positions, a man as breadwinner ideal began to emerge (Chege and Sifuna 2006; Ocobock 2017). Since the 1980s, research has shown men in Kenya failing to live up to expectations of providing financially (Izugbara 2015; Mojola 2014; Amuyunzu-Nyamongo and Francis 2006; Silberschmidt 2001). This economic strife is largely due to declines in agricultural industries such as sugar and pyrethrum, the falling price of cash crops such as coffee, the rising cost of agricultural inputs, declining farmland in rural areas (Amuyunzu-Nyamongo and Francis 2006; Silberschmidt 2001), and the limited, precarious, and low-paid nature of much work in urban areas (Izugbara 2015).

Some scholars have argued that this schism between men’s breadwinning responsibilities and the economic reality on the ground has led to the “disempowerment” of poorer men who fall short of expectations (Silberschmidt 2001; Amuyunzu-Nyamongo and Francis 2006). In this explanation, women strengthened their identities as they increasingly worked outside the home, leaving men “with a patriarchal ideology bereft of its legitimizing activities” (Silberschmidt 2001, 657). The resulting lack of self-esteem led some men to seek a combination of power and solace in alcohol, domestic violence, and extra-marital partners, with women consequently bearing much of the brunt of men’s disappointments (Amuyunzu-Nyamongo and Francis 2006; Silberschmidt 2001).

Beyond Kenya, these tensions around socio-economic change, masculinity, and gender relations have been documented in diverse settings across sub-Saharan Africa, including in Madagascar (Cole 2005), Nigeria (Smith 2017) and Uganda (Stites 2013). The economic travails and perceived loss of status amongst poorer men stands in contrast to the fact that men continue to disproportionately occupy positions of political and economic power in much of sub-Saharan Africa (Bouka et al. 2017; World Bank 2007). These contrasts are stark in Kenya, where income inequality is high (World Bank 2009). Though this research on masculinity and socio-economic change largely focuses on men from the lower end of the economic spectrum, the understanding that “providing” is fundamental to masculinity also extends to higher income groups and, indeed, the ability to fulfill these ideals signifies class status (Smith 2017; Spronk 2012).

GENDER EQUALITY: MOBILIZATION AND RESPONSES

In the past few decades, Kenyan women have mobilized in diverse ways for gender equality. After the shift to a multi-party system in the 1990s, women’s organizations in Kenya were able to intensify their efforts to advance women’s political position, focusing particularly on integrating key provisions into the constitution that was eventually passed in 2010 (Tripp, Lott, and Khabure 2014). The new constitution marked a turning point for gender equality in Kenya, dramatically increasing the numbers of women in politics. However, one of its major victories—a provision that no more than two-thirds of any publicly elected body may be the same gender—has yet to be fully enforced and women politicians continue to face violence and intimidation (Bouka et al. 2017; Kamuru 2019). Women also have formed profession-based activist organizations such as the Federation of Women Lawyers, which has provided legal assistance to women on issues such as child custody and landownership as well as advocated for legal reforms, including around the two-thirds gender rule. More recently, social media has offered a new platform for feminists and women’s rights activists to protest and voice their opinions, including drawing attention to brutal cases of violence against women (Nyabola 2018).

Scholars have begun to assess how men are responding to global and local efforts around gender equality. A study from a low-income community in Kampala, Uganda found that many men were relatively supportive of women’s rights in the public sphere, but more uncomfortable with these ideas in the home (Wyrod 2008). A smaller proportion of men were outright “hostile” to gender equality, remaining adamant about male superiority and resistant to change (Wyrod 2008, 809). Similarly mixed attitudes towards gender equality have been documented in South Africa (Dworkin et al. 2012) and Nigeria (Smith 2017). A discursive spectrum approach offers an additional way to examine attitudes to gender equality: by examining actors brought together through their engagement with a discourse, rather than shared demographics or area of residence.

Economic and social shifts in the gender order provide necessary context for the emergence of the boy child narrative. But given that this narrative is ostensibly about children, what gendered patterns in outcomes exist amongst boys and girls? Arguably, the largest shift in recent years has been in education, with girls making considerable advances. Gender parity has been achieved in primary school enrollment across the more densely-populated central and western parts of Kenya. Disparities, however, still persist at the primary school level in other parts of the country, such as the North, North-East, and some of the coastal counties, where poverty levels are higher than the rest of the country (KNBS 2018; Ministry of Education, Science and Technology 2014). In contrast, the relatively wealthier central counties have reached gender parity even in secondary school enrollment (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology 2014).

The limited existing research from Kenya that mentions the boy child explicitly, rather than boys generally, tends to take the claim that “the boy child has been neglected” at face value (Chang’ach 2012; Muthaa et al. 2013; Karioki and Thinguri 2015). For example, one paper on school drop-out amongst boys in western Kenya is titled “An Unfinished Agenda: Why is the Boy Child Endangered?” (Chang’ach 2012). One exception is a study by Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission that gauged public perception on whether the boy child had been excluded from gender equality efforts (NGEC 2015). I contribute to this nascent area of research by making the discourse around the boy child the object of study itself.

METHODS

I draw on newspaper text from the Daily Nation, The Standard, and The Star, the three English-language newspapers in Kenya with the largest circulations, sold in print as well as published online (Nyabuga and Booker 2013). These three newspapers represent arenas of public and national debate, covering views and events from across the country. In addition, the relatively long timeframe (1999–2017) of the data provides an opportunity to examine how a social problem—in this case, the boy child—emerges and what keeps it in the public eye.

To contextualize these newspaper texts, it is important to note that with an estimated three million people reading newspapers daily out of a population of more than 45 million, Kenya’s newspaper readership is substantial (Nyabuga and Booker 2013) but also selective. For one, newspaper readership is higher in urban areas and amongst men. In 2014, 41 percent of men said that they read the paper at least once a week compared to 18 percent of women. Newspaper readership also shows relatively steep wealth and education gradients (KNBS et al. 2015).

To find relevant texts, I entered boy child in the newspapers’ online search engines. I discounted certain boy child references, including those relating to fertility preferences (e.g., how to conceive a boy child), one specific boy (e.g., a boy child has gone missing), and religion (i.e., boy child Jesus Christ). The first mentions of the boy child date from 1999, 2009, and 2012 in the Daily Nation, The Standard, and The Star, respectively. This range of dates is due to differences in when each paper started publishing online as well as the functioning of their search engines. After the exclusions, 224 texts remained that comprised six types: news articles (n=87), opinion pieces (n=53), feature articles (n=35), letters to the editor (n=27, only in the Daily Nation and The Standard), profiles (n=18), and editorials (n=4). I include this range of article types because they reveal different aspects of the boy child narrative. News articles show how the boy child comes up in public speeches, for example, while opinion pieces reveal the views of social commentators, including women who may be less represented in the news events. I then downloaded the texts in PDF format. The process of selecting and preparing the texts took place in March and April 2017.

Using NVivo, I then proceeded to conduct a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the articles. The quantitative component attended to changes over time in the discourse—in the types of claims-makers, for example—as well as the relative frequency of particular themes and frames. The qualitative analysis focused on elucidating these patterns, and analyzing the meaning behind certain frames and the relationships between them (Altheide and Schneider 2017). My first step of analysis was to create a classification sheet recording the name and gender of author, publication year, text type, and publishing newspaper for each text. Then, guided by Franzosi’s methodology of analyzing narrative through assessing its “story grammar,” I coded all of the newspaper texts based on the key components of a claim (Franzosi 2010). The number of claims in each text was based on the number of individuals voicing opinions about the boy child (claims-makers) in a particular text. Claims-makers ranged in terms of their public visibility, from the nationally recognized, including politicians and media personalities, to the locally known, including school principals and district education officers, to private individuals writing letters to the editor. In the results, I refer to claims-makers’ social positions at the time of making the claim, rather than their social position today. In total, the 224 texts comprised 252 claims.

To code these claims, I applied main codes for who was making the claim with derivative codes including name, gender, and occupation sector; how the claim was being made with derivative codes for geographic location as well as type of event; at whom the claim was being addressed; and why the claim-maker thought the boy child was a problem, with derivative codes for what other social problems the claims-maker associated with the boy child such as violence, men’s mental health, and substance abuse. Alongside these claim codes, I coded for how the boy child was framed as a problem, including the adjectives associated with the boy child such as “neglected” or “forgotten,” who was blamed for the current predicament of the boy child, and whether attention to the girl child was described as harming the boy child. Finally, I coded for the types of solutions claims-makers put forward to address the problem of the boy child.

THE NARRATIVE OF THE BOY CHILD

Neglected and Forgotten

The term “boy child” was generally used to present boys as in need of attention. Slightly less than half of all the claims described the boy child as badly off in some way, most commonly as “neglected,” or with other terms indicating a lack of attention such as “forgotten,” “ignored,” and “left behind.” In contrast, the use of more active terms—that the boy child had been “discriminated” against or “mistreated,” for example—amounted to only a handful (n=8) of claims. Though blame was infrequently (5 percent) directed at women’s rights groups or the girl child campaign explicitly, framing the neglect of the boy child as a consequence of over-focusing on the girl child was relatively common with around a fifth of the total number of claims making this connection. An editorial illustrated this frame of neglect and over-focus on the girl child:

But as good as recognising the girl child has been, it has come with its own downside. Too much attention has been paid to the girl child that the boy child has been completely ignored. The roles have been reversed and boys are experiencing neglect (Standard, October 12, 2016).

Claims-makers argued that this disregard for the boy child was causing harm, noting that boys were “suffering,” “in trouble,” “under threat,” and “endangered” as a result (10 percent). In an opinion piece, contributing writer Francis Waweru reflected on the public response to the police’s killing of eight young men in the Mukuru kwa Reuben slum in Nairobi, writing, “If the eight were girls, there would have been a countrywide outcry.” He criticized the Kenyan Human Rights Commission for remaining silent on the issue, concluding, “Are boys not humans? Surely, why has the life of the boy-child become so cheap? Indeed, boys are an endangered species” (Standard, May 18, 2016). In these narratives of neglect, the grievance tended to be two-fold: first, that boys or men were in trouble in some way, and second, that society was not paying adequate attention.

This frame of neglect also was echoed in the letters to the editor, largely by men. Of the 27 letters to the editor, only six were from women. In some cases, the tone grew bitter, connecting the plight of the boy child to the state of men. For example, reader Simon Kimani wrote, “We have forsaken the boy child and soon it might cause grievous harm to the society … Women should stop taking men as sperm donors and value them as their husbands” (Nation, June 23, 2013). Though women did evoke the neglect frame (in four of their six letters), their focus was more on boys themselves, from saying that rape of boys should be recognized as a problem to referring to the boy child as a “mere flickering light” (Nation, March 10, 2015). This more contained concern about the boy child may in part explain why the tone of anger that appeared in some men’s letters was markedly absent from the women’s letters.

Not all claims-makers described the boy child as worse off. Around one-tenth of the claims framed the boy child as “advantaged” or “privileged” compared to the girl child, often in descriptions of regions seen as poorer and more traditional. An article about a girls’ secondary school in Tana River County reflects this sentiment: “In a region where culture and poverty reign supreme, the girls have to struggle to elude the dragons of early marriages, female genital mutilation and general perception that education is just for the boy-child” (Nation, June 29, 2011). Some claims-makers explicitly refuted the boy child narrative. In response to the question “Do you think the girl child is over-empowered as the boy child is being forgotten?” Dinah Musindarwezo, Executive Director of The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), answered, “That notion has been widely debated, but it is not true.” She pointed to the challenges that girls continued to face in some parts of Kenya such as early marriage and female genital mutilation (Star, July 27, 2016).

An Evolving Discourse

The narrative of the neglected boy child was present as early as the turn of the century. In 2000, a news article reported on a spate of attacks by boys on girls’ secondary schools across the country, in which “the boys raid, rape and injure the girls” (Nation, November 27, 2000). According to the article, a woman school principal responded that, “[E]mphasis on girl-child education in the last decade, ignoring the boy-child, could be the cause of the invasion.” Claims similar in tone continued throughout the 2000s but, as illustrated in Table 1, remained relatively sparse with around one tenth of the total claims coming from the 1999–2009 period. A marked uptick appears in the early 2010s. Boy child claims in the Daily Nation, the texts of which span the greatest period of the three newspapers, more than tripled from 18 during 2005–2009 to 58 from 2010–2014.

Table 1.

Types of claim over time (n=252)

	1999–2004	2005–2009	2010–2014	2015–2017	Total
Total number of claims	9	19	114	110	252
Gender of claim-maker, n (%)
Men	4 (44)	7 (37)	52 (46)	30 (27)	93 (37)
Women	4 (44)	5 (26)	30 (26)	30 (27)	69 (27)
Not applicable	1 (11)	7 (37)	32 (28)	50 (45)	90 (36)
Newspaper, n (%)
Daily Nation	9 (100)	18 (95)	58 (51)	44 (40)	129 (51)
The Standard	0	1 (5)	22 (19)	34 (31)	57 (23)
The Star	0	0	34 (30)	32 (29)	66 (26)
Affiliation of claim-maker, n (%)
Government	0	3 (16)	24 (21)	18 (16)	45 (18)
Education	1 (11)	0	16 (14)	12 (11)	29 (12)
Religious	1 (11)	0	5 (4)	2 (2)	8 (3)
Professional and business	0	1 (5)	5 (4)	12 (11)	18 (7)
NGO	0	1 (5)	9 (8)	17 (15)	27 (11)
Newspaper	2 (22)	5 (26)	17 (15)	23 (21)	47 (19)
Members of public	3 (33)	1 (5)	10 (9)	9 (8)	23 (9)
Movement leaders	0	2 (11)	4 (4)	3 (3)	9 (4)
Missing	2 (22)	6 (32)	24 (21)	14 (13)	46 (18)
Type of article that claim appeared in, n (%)
News	1 (11)	2 (11)	40 (35)	51 (46)	94 (37)
Feature	2 (22)	6 (32)	17 (15)	19 (17)	44 (17)
Profile	0	1 (5)	11 (10)	8 (7)	20 (8)
Opinion piece	3 (33)	5 (26)	29 (25)	26 (24)	63 (25)
Letter to editor	3 (33)	5 (26)	16 (14)	3 (3)	27 (11)
Editorial	0	0	1 (1)	3 (3)	4 (2)

As the discourse grew, its contours changed. In particular, there was a trend away from individual views and towards events. Texts that highlighted individual views (i.e., opinion columns, editorials, and letters to the editor) dropped from 40 percent in 2010–2014 to 30 percent in 2015–2017, with a parallel increase in claims coming from the remaining three types of articles (i.e., news, features, and profiles) centered predominantly around events. One specific event that illustrates this trend is the emergence of the boy child narrative at school drama and music competitions. The first mention of the boy child in this arena is in 2013, when “neglect of the boy child” is described as an “unusual theme” at the annual Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama Festival (Nation, March 9, 2013). Later, in 2015 and 2016, three competitions featured a boy child performance, including a student-produced documentary on “rights of the boy child” (Nation, April 16, 2016).

Similarly indicating increased boy child action, the proportion of claims from the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector rose from eight percent in 2010–2014 to 15 percent in 2015–2017. In the earlier years, these claims were purely discursive, but around 2013 some actors began to take action on behalf of the boy child. Examples include the Ripples International Foundation in Meru County partnering with a charity marathon race to raise money for a variety of causes, including “boy child abuse” (Star, June 22, 2013); in 2015, teacher Elliot Karanja setting up a campaign called “Save the Boy, Save the Nation” (Nation, March 26, 2015); and the Austrian Ambassador to Kenya providing both sanitary pads to girls and “hygiene kits” to boys—including “inner wears, soaps, combs, toothpaste”—through an NGO called Rural Teenagers Support Programme (Star, June 2, 2015). These boy child actions were mainly spearheaded by individuals or organizations working at the local level, rather than national and international NGOs. Together, these trends in the types of articles and claims-makers show how boy child discourse percolated to the realm of action.

Boys in the Future

Some claims-makers stressed the urgency of the situation by explicitly referencing the future (7 percent), describing the current predicament of the boy child as a “time bomb” and “dangerous trend.” However, more common than explicitly referencing the future was to do so implicitly, by associating the neglect of the boy child either with the state of men or with social problems involving men. A whole host of issues were attributed to the neglect of the boy child, from jigger (a parasitic flea) infestations to men’s shorter lifespans, but four areas stood out in particular: education, substance abuse, violence, and partnering.

Concerns about education, particularly around exam performance and school enrollment, were the largest generator of boy child discourse, with around a quarter of boy child claims referencing education in some way. In 2010, for example, the Minister of Education Sam Ongeri stated that in some parts of the country, more girls than boys had taken the primary school leaving exam: “In these provinces [Central, Eastern, and Nairobi], we may need to start worrying about the boy child. I wish to call on the leaders and parents to assist my ministry in changing the attitude towards the boy child education before it becomes a challenge” (Nation, December 28, 2010). Boys also were described as dropping out of school, mainly to earn money. These reports reflected regional patterns in livelihoods with, for example, boys leaving school to pick the stimulant leaf miraa (or khat), a particular concern in Meru and Embu.

Men predominated in the conversation about education and the boy child with about two thirds of the claims coming from men, and were also more likely to associate these trends with an overall decline in men’s position in society. For example, County Assembly Deputy Speaker Gideon Kimathi urged those in the education sector to come to the rescue of the boy child, saying, “The boy child lags behind in education and he might have no leadership role to play.” He then went on to connect the problem to men, urging “men to ‘wake up from their self-imposed slumber’ and reclaim their rightful place in society” (Star, July 22, 2015). Women, on the other hand, tended to keep the focus on the boys themselves. For example, in response to boys dropping out of school, a district education officer in Embu County, Margerate Mwangi, said, “Initially, female circumcision worked against girls but sensitisation has helped to curb the practice. Now, the problem has shifted to boys, whose schooling is endangered” (Standard, November 28, 2012). In sum, education was an explosive policy arena in which metrics such as exam scores and enrollment numbers provided claims-makers with material to reflect on the well-being of boys and girls and, in many cases, broader gender relations in society.

Both men and women raised the use of alcohol and/or drugs (in 14 percent of claims) as an outcome of neglecting the boy child. Men were described generally as turning to substances because they lacked self-esteem or direction, having not received adequate guidance as boys and now facing current economic difficulties. Again, some men connected substance abuse to a decline in men’s power. A news article described how older men from the Kikuyu ethnic group were starting a “major boy child initiative,” including a community showcase of traditional Kikuyu customs, “which should be upheld for [the boy child] to become a man, head of the family and leader in the community.” Two of the elders said that parents were treating the boy child as “the weaker sex,” which had “led to boys finding consolation in crime, drug taking and alcoholism, which is a shame to the community” (Star, June 4, 2015). This mobilization of Kikuyu elders also reflects another theme of the texts, namely the higher proportion of boy child claims explicitly referencing central Kenya and the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group.

Violence was also described as an outcome of neglecting the boy child, with slightly more than one-tenth of claims making this connection. Unlike education, where the women tended to focus on boys themselves, violence was an arena in which women connected the boy child to the state of men. In one opinion piece, columnist Njeri Aseneka reflected on the spate of men in Nairobi publicly stripping women they perceived to be indecently dressed. She began by condemning this “barbaric behavior,” writing that “the bottom line is that it’s a woman’s call [what she wears], and no one should ‘discipline’ her for her choices” (Nation, September 12, 2014). But, delving into the question of cause, she comes to the boy child:

Over the years there have been myriad campaigns and affirmative action to empower girls and women. It’s only now emerging this could have tilted the balance against the boy child. Who knows what this could be doing to the psyche of these young men as they watch women take up jobs and responsibilities they thought were their entitlement … Given that sexual violations are increasing and are about power, could these men be trying, in their misguided ways, to reclaim their lost authority over women? (Nation, September 12, 2014).

In a critique of a conference on “Challenging Patriarchy” organized by a German NGO, another columnist, Dorothy Kweyu, similarly associated men’s violence against women with not paying enough attention to boys, arguing:

Blanket condemnation of patriarchy, and masculinity, ignores the fact that masculinity and femininity are two sides of the same coin, and any attempts at playing one against the other will be catastrophic as it’s quite likely that ignoring the boy-child is the cause of rising violence (Nation, October 27, 2013).

In these claims, women argued that attention needs to be paid to boys, not for men to regain their rightful superior position in society, but rather for men to be different and for women’s lives to be better.

Lastly, in about five percent of claims, some claims-makers associated the neglect of the boy child with women’s difficulties in finding partners. In a feature about a newly formed boys school, the head of the school Purity Kiruri, who founded it in honor of her deceased daughter said, “Even as it is a noble endeavour to empower the girl child, the boy child has been ignored to the extent that our girls have no one to marry as the men are wallowing in alcohol and irresponsibility” (Standard, January 22, 2012). Though both men and women voiced concerns about declining marriage, some women drew on personal experience. Karimi Gatimi, in her column “Wife Speak,” described how she conducted some “informal research” amongst single women after a former classmate told her, “But there are no good, single men anymore!” (Nation, February 17, 2015). After hearing of women’s difficulties in finding partners, Gatimi wondered “whether we might we have concentrated too much on empowering the girl child, given her the right exposure, believed in her abilities and raised her standards but forgot the boy child.” When it comes to violence and partnering, women’s well-being was central to the arguments from certain claims-makers, mostly women, to redirect attention back to the boy child.

Solutions and Backlash

Despite the urgency with which most claims-makers spoke about the boy child, the large majority did not propose a solution. The most common attempt at a solution, featured in around a fifth of claims, was a vague call to action, urging the public or a particular group to “pay attention to,” “rescue,” and “nurture” the boy child, as well as a similar plea to “balance gender equality” and to “remember” both the girl and boy child. Amongst the more concrete recommendations, the most common, featured in slightly over one-tenth of claims, was a call for greater guidance and mentoring of boys either through formal mentorship programs or family networks. Two other distinct but infrequently proposed sets of solutions, found in just under five percent of claims, included providing boys with more resources, generally through establishing more all-boys schools and providing boys with “hygiene kits,” and changing laws, such as the Sexual Offences Act (2006) to protect young men in consensual relationships from being sent to prison.

The solutions proposed were closely tied to wide-ranging attitudes about gender equality. At the far end of the spectrum was Ndiritu Njoka, the leader of a group called Maendeleo ya Wanaume, which directly translates from Kiswahili as Progress for Men, mirroring the name of the women’s organization Maendeleo ya Wanawake. A highly provocative character who had been accused of domestic violence, Njoka made boy child claims and also provoked others to do so; 15 claims were either from him or mentioned him. From Nyeri in central Kenya, Njoka’s views are encapsulated in the title of his book, Coup de Grace: Gender Apartheid 1st World War of Sexes, in which he argued that a worldwide plot to eliminate men was afoot (Nation, November 8, 2013). In one interview, he stated that “women were created for men” (Nation, November 24, 2014). His proposals to remedy the boy child issue, and gender relations in Kenya more broadly, ranged from urging men to refuse to have sex with their wives to more serious policy prescriptions such as limiting women’s representation in parliament and assuring that men have automatic custody of children in cases of separation.

Another distinct group of claims-makers were those who did not propose gender regressive policies or explicitly articulate a gender hierarchy but who nonetheless suggested that girl empowerment had upset the balance of gender relations and that stability needed to be restored. The most influential individual holding this view was Pastor Simon Mbevi, who set up a large-scale seminar series for boys and men and authored eight books on “fatherhood, family and sexual purity.” In an interview, he stated, “Unlike the girl child who has been empowered, the boy child has been neglected and no one is arming him to be a leader as the society dictates” (Standard, May 25, 2014). In terms of the cause of the problem, Mbevi appeared mainly concerned about the absence of fathers, saying, “Without responsible fathers in our society, our generation is doomed. We are bringing up a society full of pink men or mama’s boys.” As a solution, he asked men to step in as mentors into single-mother homes. Mbevi pushed the boundaries of masculinity somewhat by emphasizing the importance of fathers being loving rather than harsh or frightening and of men opening up to one another about their problems. However, he mainly seemed concerned about raising boys as they “should” be and not straying too far from a gender order in which men are the leaders.

The third distinct stance was motivated by a concern for women’s well-being, often raising the issues of violence and partnering. This view lacked a figurehead like Njoka or Mbevi, and was mainly held by women. For example, columnist Valentine Njoroge critiqued Njoka’s proposal that men refuse to have sex with their wives to highlight the plight of the boy child. Before outlining her thoughts on boys and men as well as proposing her solutions, Njoroge provided a disclaimer:

Let me be clear, I want emancipation for all. The feminist movement is about creating equal opportunities for women—an environment in which women have choices—to be or not to be a housewife, to pursue or not to pursue a career, to serve or not to serve in government and so on. We have made great strides but a glance at our representation in leadership tells you that we still have a long way to go and we are not pausing for the boy-child (Star, November 22, 2014).

Here Njoroge is critiquing current gender inequality in Kenya and suggesting that the figure of the boy child has been used to block, at least discursively, progress in this area. She went on to argue, however, that her position as a woman makes her particularly concerned about the boy child, writing: “As the end-user of what the boy child is growing into I am to raise him, be governed by him (men hold the majority in legislation and government), marry him, raise a family with him, and perhaps employ him.” She also highlighted the issue of finding partners, writing that she is interested in a man who would “celebrate, support, and even invest” in her success, and yet men are often drunk, unfaithful, or violent. In response to these problems, she wrote, “I believe men and boys need spaces where they can be heard, understood and supported.” At first glance, this proposed solution for greater guidance appears quite similar to the proposals of those who felt that girl empowerment had gone “too far.” However, it is radically different in that its motivation is rooted in a concern for women’s well-being.

For these boy child claims-makers concerned with gender equality, one distinct solution proposed was to raise boys differently. Exemplifying this approach, columnist Dorothy Kweyu wrote that reducing violence in Kenya required “a total overhaul of the boy child’s upbringing to bring out his better side” (Nation, November 28, 2004). Steps in this regard “could include teaching him that there is nothing wrong in displaying tender behaviour towards those he claims to love.” Kweyu concludes her column with a final suggestion on raising boys and a critique of the status quo more broadly, writing, “It means teaching boys that there is nothing demeaning in the so-called “feminine” tasks, just as there is nothing redeeming in the image of power and domination that our society has perpetuated, to its own detriment.” At the heart of this type of boy child claim lies the fact that Kenyan women live alongside Kenyan men, and that for women’s lives to be better, men must change. And for this, there is no better starting point than where men begin — as boys.

CONCLUSION

Based on two decades of online newspaper texts, this study examines the emergence of debate surrounding the boy child in Kenya and its relation to women’s shifting social position. In contrast to prior research on backlash and reactions to gender equality more broadly, both of which generally take particular groups as their starting point, I focus on the discourse itself. Making boy child claims the unit of analysis brought to the fore a wide array of perspectives and discursive actors that might not have been visible otherwise. This framework, which I call a discursive spectrum approach, thus revealed the boy child narrative’s complex relationship to gender equality. It draws on scholars who largely focused on analyzing policy documents or debates about government obligations (Fraser 1990; Bacchi 2012; Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009). This article thus illustrates the value of extending these ideas beyond the policy realm to include more emerging discourses, when the general public is debating whether a particular social issue qualifies as a “problem.”

The predominant narrative around the boy child was that after a great deal of focus on the girl child, the boy child has been neglected and needs attention. The frequency with which the term appeared in the three newspapers suggests that a problematized discourse around the boy child was already present at the beginning of the 2000s, but accelerated around 2010. The growth in boy child discourse over time can in part be explained by the narrative’s contentious nature. In a snowball fashion, boy child claims generated more boy child claims as actors affirmed or critiqued others’ use of the narrative. The escalation of claims also resulted from the narrative’s movement from discourse to action. Amidst continuing debate about the state of the boy child, around 2013, groups and individuals began taking action in the name of the boy child that in turn generated further boy child claims. This actioning of the narrative shows not only how crisis tendencies (Connell 1987) can produce a discourse, but also how that discourse, once it has reached a certain momentum, can then shape the contours of the crisis tendency itself.

A focus on discourse revealed that claims-makers who argued that the boy child had been forgotten held wide-ranging views on gender equality. These included those who lamented men’s loosening hold on power and advocated for a rollback of gender equality policies. Other claims-makers thought the fight for gender equality still had a long way to go. In between were others who showed some discomfort in the shifting gender power balance, speaking of men’s “rightful” position as leaders, but not calling for policy change. In this sense, the boy child discourse is indeed a reaction to women’s changing social position, but the variety of motivations suggests that the discourse cannot be categorized solely as negative backlash. This spectrum of attitudes aligns with scholarship on the reception of expanding women’s rights (Wyrod 2008; Dworkin et al. 2012), but also shows how those with opposing views on gender equality can become unexpected bedfellows in agreeing that boys and men need attention.

The analysis suggests that this mercurial relationship of the narrative to gender equality is a result of two main contradictions in Kenya’s gender order that have accompanied the focus on the girl child and women’s rights. For some, the contradiction is that men are meant to be the power-holders in society yet they appear to be losing their grip, including in families (evidenced by single-mother households) and in schools (where girls are beginning to outperform boys). For others, the contradiction is that women are struggling with issues, such as violence, that require men to change and cannot be solved through women’s empowerment alone. In central Kenya, higher levels of education and employment amongst women (KNBS et al. 2015) combined with the matrilineal history of the Kikuyu (Kenyatta 1965) could simultaneously be heightening the potential and threat of gender equality efforts, leading to the greater number of boy child claims referencing this part of Kenya.

Though these contradictions can lead groups with very different views on gender equality to agree that boys need attention, what exactly to do about it remains a source of contention. Some claims-makers use the boy child narrative to attempt to reverse or stall change in the gender order. Others, largely women, use the boy child narrative to highlight the entanglement of women’s well-being with that of men and to argue that men must change, simultaneously dismissing the idea that gender equality has gone “too far” and that gender equality efforts should only focus on girls and women. This latter group of claims echoes the theoretical tenant of gender and development that “an undifferentiated and unilateral focus on women is not only conceptually inappropriate, but deprives gender interventions of their transformative potential” (Chant and Guttman 2000, 9). These varied solutions provide important insights into why various claims-makers think the boy child needs attention.

In many ways, the boy child is just as vaguely presented as his girl child sister, often described without any qualifiers, but simply as “the boy child.” Of particular note, the boy child is rarely explicitly referred to as the poor boy child, and yet the problems associated with the boy child clearly show a class dimension, such as boys dropping out of school to earn money. Another class dimension is the close relationship of Pastor Simon Mbevi, the boy child advocate who has published books and founded a seminar series on masculinity, to more middle-class churches in Kenya (Gitau 2018). Further examination of the complex interaction between class and gender, and potentially religion too, in the boy child discourse is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worthy of further investigation along the lines of Lindsay’s (2018) study of the interaction of race and gender in all-black boys schools in the United States. As gender gaps in schooling outcomes close, and even reverse, across much of the Global South (Grant and Behrman 2010), debates around “neglected” boys will likely only grow. As they do, keeping the focus on which boys are disadvantaged is paramount. In the Caribbean, where a discourse around underperforming boys has existed since the early 1990s, the resulting education policy focus on boys has largely overlooked the significant differences in education outcomes by class (Cobbett and Younger 2012)

This study has some limitations. The first is that because the data were retrieved online, I likely did not obtain all the texts published about the boy child during the period of study (1999 to 2017). This is almost certainly the case for The Standard, which was publishing in print throughout the period, and yet the first text in the study from this newspaper dates from 2009. The incomplete corpus of boy child texts is likely further due to the potential inconsistencies in the three newspapers’ search engines. Other limitations can serve as starting points for future research. Given my focus on English-language publications, I am not able to speak to what narratives around the boy child exist in other languages in Kenya; the regional patterns that emerged suggest that examining the discourse around the boy child in Kikuyu could be particularly interesting. Similarly, future research could study boy child discourse in other media arenas, such as TV and radio as well as blogs. Lastly, the use of newspaper texts means that the boy child narrative presented here is an institutionalized one: editorial boards influence which events to cover, who can write as a columnist, which letters to print, and ultimately, shape the words used. As such, there remains a need to study how this produced narrative is being received, understood, and generated on the ground.

The discursive spectrum approach taken in this article could be applied to contexts beyond Kenya that are witnessing public debate that might represent opposition to gender equality as well as policy debates around “what to do” about boys and men. A discursive spectrum approach starts with the discourse itself, paying attention to the range of orientations to gender equality amongst claims-makers. One phrase or saying—the boy child, in this case—can be an effective entry point. Claims-makers’ concerns and goals around a particular problem can be used to assess their attitudes to gender equality and the problems associated with a particular issue (e.g., violence against women and the boy child) can show why different claims-makers care about that issue. Moreover, the solutions they propose can indicate the type of society they desire. Together, these views can then point to types of claims-makers, who may or may not be formally connected to one another.

Discourse is a site of both risk and opportunity for gender equality. Many groups with competing visions can strategically draw on the same words and slogans to champion their preferred gender order. Identifying a discursive spectrum can reveal elements of backlash in public debate before they escalate into a serious political force and can help make sense of the perennially contentious discourse around policy attention to boys and men.