Domestic violence continues to be a huge social problem 26 years after Mrs Piah Njoki had her eyes gouged out by her husband of 15 years. Mr Jackson Kagwai attacked Njoki, a mother of six, with a broken bottle because she had only borne him daughters. Three years later in court, however, she asked the judge not to jail her husband because she would be left alone to fend for her six daughters.

The story of Njoki, who is to be buried today, is not really about the bestiality of one man, though many will see it that way. It says more about the social and cultural atmosphere in which we live. It is this atmosphere that informed police slow response to Ms Betty Kavata’s brutal battering in 1998, or the slashing of Ms Mary Akinyi a year later for singing a ndombolo song in front of a guest.

In this climate, many forms of violence against women go unremarked and unpunished. Only in cases where the violence reaches extremes is society horrified. But in most instances, religious teachings about the nature of marital unions, cultural attitudes to wifely discipline and institutional responses to violence in the home serve to perpetuate the problem.

There is a world of work to be done to eradicate wife battering. Much of it needs doing in society itself, not just in the legal system. Until the nation ends male domination of resources and power, and breaks the false hierarchy it accepts as divinely ordained, little will be achieved through penal code amendments, adoption of international instruments and changes to the Constitution.