Heterosexual Masculinity and Femicide in Kenya

The central problem to be examined by the proposed project is how heterosexuality constructs women's disempowerment and how heterosexual masculinities' role in femicide in Kenya is erased from the media and justice system.
Research Questions
The study will use a two-pronged approach to answer the following questions:
1) What is the prevalence of femicide in Kenya?
2) How does the media and the justice system diminish the perceived threat of femicide?
3) What are men's perspectives of women's attempted empowerment and the attendant change in masculine norms?
Research Objectives
Determine the prevalence and risk factors of femicide victimisation and perpetration in Kenya.
Examine the media portrayal of IPF in the context of heterosexual romantic love and passion narratives.
Examine whether femicide-related court and police documents reflect dominant social norms about appropriate female behaviour.
Examine male femicide perpetrators conceptualisation of women's empowerment within heterosexuality.
Methodology
To collect and analyse data, a mixed-methods approach is preferred because it can combine an in-depth examination with numerical dimensions,
Sampling, data collection and analysis
(a) Sampling will involve the mortuaries and the study respondents. Multi-stage cluster sampling, preferred for gathering primary data from a geographically dispersed population, will be used to get a national representative sample. Clustering by region will come first, followed by ethnicity within the region, and finally random sampling of morgues. Ethnic clustering will be helpful to highlight any differences in femicide prevalence and risk factors. Both private and public morgues in urban and rural areas would be considered equally. Purposive sampling will be used to select key informants, while convenience sampling will be used with perpetrators because they are a hard-to-reach population.
(b) To generate quantitative data, a retrospective mortuary-based study of female homicide victims aged 12 years and above that occurred between January 2011 and December 2021 will be conducted. Document analysis involving media, police and court records, death registers and autopsy reports will be used to generate both quantitative and qualitative data. Ethnographic qualitative interviews with duty bearers in the media/ judiciary/police departments and femicide perpetrators will be conducted.
(c) Quantitative data will be analysed using inferential and descriptive statistics. For example, incident rate ratio (IRR) will be used to measure the prevalence of femicide. Further, parametric and non-parametric tests such as Mann-Kendal trend test will measure the risk factors. Qualitative data will use discourse analysis (DA), useful in analysing gender relations and social control. It can also demonstrate how inequalities contributing to femicide are produced, rendered factual, justified, and sustained