Nine out of 10 women in Kenya receive harassment and nuisance calls and SMSs, a Truecaller Insights report has found.
Women in urban areas are the most harassed, with Nairobi being the top. From the study, only two in 10 women in Kenya have taken action against harassment calls, and very few ever report this to the authority.
The survey was conducted from November 22, 2019 to February 24, 2020. It aims to understand the impact of harassment calls and SMSs for women in Kenya, India, Brazil, Egypt and Colombia.
It combines quantitative research conducted by Ipsos in each local market to get the statistics behind the problem, with face-to-face interviews with local women to give context and reality to the data.
The key findings from the report are that sexual and inappropriate calls are common among women in Nairobi, where one in five women receive this type of communication.
Some 47 per cent of all the sexual harassment calls/SMSs comes from inmates in Kenya, and 53 per cent comes from unknown people.
"The fact that the harassers are selecting women at random to harass is perplexing and irritating, especially in a country like Kenya, where that level is high," the report says.
Despite it being common for women to receive sexual or inappropriate calls and SMSs, only 11 per cent of all women who have received sexual harassment calls/SMS consider it as harassment.
