Language and the Fight Against Gbv: The Voices of Students from a Kenyan University

Central to the fight against gender based violence (GBV) is an understanding of the meaning of and the various forms of GBV. Additionally, the fight can be enhanced through an understanding of how language use promotes GBV and on the flip side how the same language can be used as a tool to fight against GBV. Research has shown that GBV is prevalent in schools and in universities and therefore the need to raise awareness on how to fight it in these settings. We therefore sought to find out how well students from a selected university in Kenya understood GBV and the role of language in the promotion of as well as fight against GBV. Through FDGs and individual interviews the study aimed to : establish the students’ understanding of the meaning of GBV, determine their knowledge of different forms of GBV and their occurrence in campus, collect and describe the students’ views on how language promotes GBV and lastly gather the students’ ideas on how language can be used in the fight against GBV. This paper reports the voices of the students and makes recommendations on how to harness the power of language in the fight against GBV in universities.