Description
This paper interrogates how violent extremism is understood and experienced by women at local community level in Kenya using body mapping. Body mapping is a form of embodied storytelling that allows the participants to reflect on experiences, thoughts and feelings physically through the body, visually through the arts, verbally through storytelling and relationally with the other participants and the researcher (Dew, Smith, Collings, and Dillon Savage 2018). Our study revealed that for many women, violent extremism is an everyday phenomenon experienced primarily in the private sphere in the form of female genital mutilation, forced early marriages, denial of education, and domestic violence. Our research participants considered gender based violence and entrenched gender inequality as a manifestation of violent extremism and the driver of this phenomenon. Yet, in Kenya, the government frames violent extremism using a top down, state-centered and male-shaped approach that prioritizes the public over the private sphere making women’s experiences of violence and inequality invisible. Based on our findings we argue that in order to tackle violent extremism we need to redefine this concept from a gender perspective in a way that makes women’s experiences of violence and insecurity a central element.
