What makes some women so violent?

The viciousness with which some women respond to the daily stresses of life is sometimes an indication that they have a mental problem. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH

What you need to know:

  • The conversation that has been going on since then has been on one simple question: How can a woman be so violent?
  • Violence in women is not exactly new and has been reported in the media before, and when it is, it is the degree that is often shocking.
  • We have read headlines like “Woman in court for torturing her 4-year-old niece”, “Mother scalds her son for eating without permission”, “Moses Wetangula nursing injuries after being battered by wife”, and “Miss Lang’ata Prison in court over boyfriend’s murder”.

The New Year might have started on a good note for many people who were glad just to have seen 2017, but for one Marie Obara, it is a day she will remember for the humiliation she underwent.

 At 10.27 pm, she uploaded a video on Twitter with the caption, “This happened to me today.” The 19-second video clip shows Ms Obara being roughed up by a female police officer at a road block on the Kericho-Chepseon Road.

At one point the police officer holds Ms Obara by her trousers as she struggles to free herself, all the while asking the officer to leave her but her pleas fall on deaf ears. At another point the police officer yanks at Ms Obara’s top, revealing her breasts.

Her crime?

Driving above the 100kph speed limit, a charge she denied.

The video quickly went viral, with most Kenyans on social media criticising the police officer. However, some defended the officer, saying that Ms Obara must have flouted some traffic rule.

As pressure mounted from the public, the policewoman’s boss, Kericho county Police Commander James Mugera, defended her actions, but shortly thereafter, issued another statement saying the officer had been interdicted.

The following day, it emerged that Ms Obara wasn’t even the one driving; someone else in the car with her was.

VICIOUS TREATMENT

What made the incident stand out was the obvious viciousness of the police officer. It was unnerving watching her (wo)manhandle Ms Obara the way she did, police tactics for subduing those they consider guilty notwithstanding. She was relentless in her brutality, even as onlookers pleaded with her to treat Ms Obara more humanely.

The conversation that has been going on since then has been on one simple question: How can a woman be so violent?

Violence in women is not exactly new and has been reported in the media before, and when it is, it is the degree that is often shocking. We have read headlines like “Woman in court for torturing her 4-year-old niece”, “Mother scalds her son for eating without permission”, “Moses Wetangula nursing injuries after being battered by wife”, and “Miss Lang’ata Prison in court over boyfriend’s murder”.

The headlines are usually screaming, but the question that many people ask themselves is: What made her do it?  Why and how it has come to be that the fairer sex, known as the nurturing, caring and loving one, can be so brutal?

Julia Kagunda, a counselling psychologist based in Westlands, Nairobi, has this to say: “Generally, women are not rough or violent. We don’t expect that from them, being the givers of life. Yet just like it would not be true to say that all men are violent, it is equally false to say that all women are nurturing.”

While acknowledging that some women are predisposed to violence, she says there are several factors that drive women to extreme violence.

“We live in a stressful environment, and women have not been spared. There is psychological stress, financial stress, physical stress from ailing bodies and stresses brought about by the circumstances in which these women exist,” she says.

She adds that if grief caused by marriage, relationships, financial issues and other daily sources of stress are not properly managed, people — be they men or women — will react. And that is what is happening in the society today.

“In the past (and in some villages to date), there were support systems to help people cope with their problems. Today people don’t talk. They don’t get together. They don’t commune with each other. The support system for families is no longer there. People are too busy. What they do is suppress their problems instead of speaking about them. That is not healthy. Suppressing trauma is not healthy, whatever form the trauma takes, it has to be dealt with,” she says.

So what could have been the problem with the female police officer who roughed up Ms Obara despite the pleas by onlookers that she show restraint?

Kagunda says it could have been a case of power at play.

The medics agree that extreme violence in women should be approached from a medical point of view, especially with regard to those who are experiencing psychotic episodes. They also agree that it is a cultural issue.

“It could have been a case of projection of weakness. There is this widely held belief that women are their own worst enemies. In the case of Ms Obara and the female officer, however, I don’t think it was about that. I think this was about power. The police officer could have been projecting her own weakness on another person, one she perceived as being weak, even though that woman didn’t look vulnerable at all. The police officer probably thought that it was easier for her to rough up another woman, courtesy of her badge,” Kagunda says.

Dr Lukoye Atwoli, associate professor of psychiatry and the dean of Moi University School of Medicine, concurs that some women might be genetically predisposed to violence, adding that what happens to them could be partly attributable to nature’s burden on them.

Dr Lukoye Atwoli suggests tackling violence in women at the societal level. PHOTO| FILE

SPECIFIC PREDISPOSITIONS

“Just like in men, some of the factors associated with violence in women do have some genetic predispositions. These will include personality, risk of mental disorders, and certain physical conditions,” he says.

“With regard to violence, women are no different from men. The same motivations behind violence by men lie behind violence by women, although from a population perspective, men are more likely to be violent than women. Social factors like poverty, poor social support networks, poor living environments, abusive relationships, substance use, among others, increase the risk of violence. Psychological factors associated with violence include personality disorders (especially antisocial personality disorder or traits) and certain mental disorders. Also, there are certain physical conditions such as brain illnesses that can  make someone violent for a period of time,” he says.

Culturally, society is wired not to see women as aggressors or violent individuals. Attempts at explaining these rather new revelations have yielded reasonable but inconclusive results. Top on that list of inconclusive outcomes of the study into violent women is the one that seeks to answer the question, what happens to the caring, loving and motherly side of such women when they fly into these fits of rage?

Dr Lukoye Atwoli says that it has to do with the factors that cause them to be violent in the first place. That once they are in that sphere of brain illness or mental disorder, they really don’t have much control.

The issue of violence perpetrated by women has been largely ignored due to the special attention that violence perpetrated by men has been given by the research community, law enforcement agencies and institutions and individuals who monitor gender-based violence. Lately however, data has been showing that, while women might not be as violent as men, they can be shockingly violent.

For instance, the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), showed that 21 per cent of married men were emotionally abused by their spouses (women) and that a further 4 per cent had experienced sexual violence at the hands of women. Given the stigma and ridicule attached to men admitting that they have been dominated physically or psychologically by women in Kenya — as indeed,  in most African societies — the survey suggested that the numbers could be much higher.

Kagunda says that the rapidly changing setup of society also has an impact on women’s behaviour. She says the fact that women in Kenya head many households today puts them in authoritative positions, and that the random outbursts of unexpected violence from women is just about them trying to react to the situation in which they have found themselves.

However, she is quick to clarify that in cases of extreme violence, such as when a woman burns her child for making a mistake, kills her spouse, or mistreats a child or children living in her house who are not hers by birth, then that woman could be going through a psychotic episode.

“I wouldn’t say that a mother can do those kinds of things and still be reacting to her circumstances. No. I think that when it gets to some point, there is a need to admit that it is now a mental issue,” she says.

In fact, she notes that one out of four people visiting Kenyan hospitals today suffers from some form of mental illness, with the difference being only in the degree.  She adds that  it would be inaccurate to say that women are not part of this group.

What about society? What does this say about Kenyans? 

Apart from boardrooms, high-stakes competition, and crime, in which women are already involved, is society unwittingly contributing to turning the fairer sex into a fierce and feared one? Dr Lukoye answers with a resounding yes. “Kenyan society generally uses violence a lot in resolving disputes, increasing the likelihood of serious harm in some instances. We approve of the use of violence in correcting children, in chastising our partners, and in confronting our political opponents. Is it any  wonder, then, that we get surprised when some members of our society take it to its logical extreme and hurt people we feel should not be hurt, or kill others we feel should not have been killed.”

THE SOLUTION?

The medics agree that extreme violence in women should be approached from a medical point of view, especially with regard to those who are experiencing psychotic episodes. They also agree that it is a cultural issue.

“The solution to all this to encourage a culture that does not condone violence right from childhood. A culture that seeks to understand the violent person and deal with the factors that increase the risk of violence in general. Over time, we will remain with only those that have conditions that make it difficult for them to control their reactions, and such people can then benefit from psychological and other treat

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The situation is changing

A paper titled “Can women be as violent as men?” by biopsychologist Dr Nigel Barber published in Psychology Today in May 2015 argued that the rise of the modern women has introduced an aspect of aggression and risk-taking in women that is fairly comparable to those qualities in men.

“Women are beginning to claim a slice of the action as gender equality moves into violent crimes and other high-risk occupations,” Dr Barber Wrote.

Dr Nigel’s assertions are supported by years of research by a different researcher, sociologist Murray Straus, who in 1975 conducted a study whose conclusions startled the United States. He found out that women were just as likely to hit their spouses as they were likely to be hit.

In 2010, he followed the study with a review in which he found out that men “account for 12 per cent to 40 per cent of those injured in heterosexual couple violence. Men also make up about 30 per cent of intimate homicide victims, not counting cases in which women kill in self-defence.”