Hot debate on sexual harassment menace

When two sides take stage on a subject as emotive as sexual harassment, expect fireworks.

The mood was set when law students from local universities jam-packed the Microsoft Auditorium of their host Strathmore Law School (SLS) to listen to a passionate debate on what constitutes sexual harassment.

Strathmore Law School Dean Luis Franceschi set the ball rolling.

He said the forum was inspired by a feisty local WhatsApp group chat in the wake of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s scandal involving sexual abuse of hundreds of minors under his care.

Nassar has since earned his just deserts: a 40 to 125 year-jail sentence.

Nassar’s jailing happened barely two months after The New York Times and The New Yorker ran exposés of film producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long sexual harassment and assault of his staff.

Mass protests under the #MeToo and #Time’s Up followed.

POWER FACTOR
When forum moderator Patricia Kameri-Mbote took the podium, she challenged her audience to see how they might address the sexual harassment menace.

The University of Nairobi (UoN) don had a difficult time controlling the charged panellists.

The hush-hush surrounding the sex topic only complicates the matter further.

Both Dr Franceschi and Prof Kameri-Mbote noted that proper sexual behaviour is often learnt from wrong sources as those supposed to inform the young ones abdicate their responsibility.

Power dynamics featured prominently in the debate.

“Who has power over you and how do you feel when you relate to them?” Prof Kameri-Mbote posed.

She listed legal, social, economic and “even political” dimensions of sexual harassment, which might explain why so few women venture into politics.

“They don’t want to get into that space and be thrown to the dogs.”

SEX FOR GRADES
Prof Kameri-Mbote threw the spanner in the works when she asked how a man is supposed to react when a woman proposes to him.

She had been in a situation where she asked young men whether any woman — a lecturer — had asked them for favours. “The boys just burst out laughing!”

The professor alluded to Sexually Transmitted Grades and Sexually Transmitted Degrees in academic circles — a phenomenon that is rife among students of both sexes.

The pervasiveness of sexual harassment could explain the complexity of implementing sexual harassment laws and policies with accusers sometimes becoming the accused as has often happened with rape cases.

Strathmore University, Kenyatta University and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology are among academic institutions with sexual harassment policies, it emerged.

The UoN covers sexual harassment under its gender policy.

HUMAN RIGHTS
Contextualising the #MeToo campaign that Saturday Nation columnist Gabrielle Lynch recently featured, the don asked how it affected Kenya.

Aware that the #MeToo campaign could have been eclipsed by Kenya’s prolonged electioneering period last year, Lynch highlighted the pervasiveness of sexual harassment “especially in highly unequal and patriarchal countries such as Kenya”.

The debate sought to address what constitutes sexual harassment and its linkages to violence.

It was hinged on the premise that human rights guarantee dignity and respect of the individual, are universal.

“They are protected and enjoyed within a social, cultural, political and economic context,” the professor said.

The panellists were Dr Agnes Meroka — an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, who lecturers at the UoN School of Law and Dr Emma Wabuke, a human rights expert and lecturer at Strathmore Law school.

Their counterparts were advocate Charles Kanjama and Dr Duncan Ojwang’, a Dean at the Africa Nazarene University School of Law.

The women argued on the Universalist human rights platform, while the men took the culturalist stance.

VIOLENCE
Mr Kanjama noted that while each relevant Act has specific nuances based on its purpose, they all zero in on “unwanted sexual solicitation”.

Dr Ojwang’ said sexual harassment happens in an environment of inequality.

Dr Meroka faulted the gender-neutral-gender-blind culturalist/relativist view.

Women’s viewpoint has to be factored since statistics show that they form the majority of sexual harassment victims.

To her, sexual harassment is violence, period!

The behaviour is “unwanted, unsolicited, unwarranted, wrong, perverted and damaging to the victim".

She took issue with the laws’ emphasis on ‘authority’ over the victim.

“What about a woman who is walking, minding her own business on the street and somebody decides to start whistling and catcalling and saying all manner of things to her?”

TOUTS
Mr Kanjama differed. He noted that gender is secondary to power relationship and gave the example of a female lecturer, a female police officer, and a female boss.

Dr Ojwang’ concurred. He visualised a situation where touts are grabbing potential passengers.

They tend to grab women more, regarding them as powerless.

“They don’t grab them to sexually harass them, but to put them on the bus. We should be clear when we draw the line between annoying things and serious things like sexual harassment,” he insisted, causing Prof Kameri-Mbote to raise the highly emotive issue of date rape.

According to Dr Meroka, all the girl wanted was a date. “…a nice meal, some good conversation, maybe some good music. Sexual harassment must therefore include behaviour that diminishes, dehumanises, and has the effect of disadvantaging the victim.”

GENDER ISSUE
Hitting at Mr Kanjama’s insinuations that sexual harassment was an imported alien concept, Dr Meroka said:

“Whether it started in Hollywood, #MeToo, is relevant even to that girl in the village.”

Her argument caused the moderator to ask if sexual harassment is a women’s right issue.

Dr Wabuke noted that 85 per cent of women suffer sexual harassment at least once in their lifetime, making it a women’s right issue.

Dr Ojwang’s view was that the village woman cares little about sexual harassment.

Her concern is getting clean drinking water, firewood and food for her family.

Sexual harassment, he insisted, was more of a class than a human rights issue.

VICTIMS
So, what about the many househelps, most of them women, who report sexual harassment by their bosses? “Are they middle class?”

Mr Kanjama said that some organisations' structural or cultural setups created a level of tolerance that made it uncomfortable for women to say:

“I’m leaving this organisation; the jokes are vile, the bosses are used to tapping our backsides....”

He insinuated that women set themselves up for harassment through “aggressive sexy dressing”.

Modestly-dressed women tend to be pressured by fellow women to conform to their standard.

In spite of spirited arguments on both sides, the Universalists won on vote-count.

Ms Kweyu is a freelance writer and consulting editor. [email protected]