Nine out of 10 women receive harassment calls from prisoners, Truecaller report

Nine out of 10 women in Kenya receive harassment and nuisance calls, a Truecaller report reveals.

Truecaller and IPSOS on Thursday released the report so as to understand the impact of harassment calls and SMSs to women in Kenya, India, Brazil, Egypt and Colombia.

From the research, these countries are the most affected in mobile sexual harassment. With 9 out of ten reports in brazil, 9 out of ten in Egypt, eight out of ten in India and six out of twenty in Colombia.

As a result, women are often angry, irritated, worried, anxious, offended and afraid.

In Kenya, the counties that are most affected are Nairobi, Mombasa, Kiambu and Nakuru, with at least 1 out of 5 women receiving these threatening messages.

It’s only in Kenya and Brazil where most harassments are from inmates.

The report also shows that in Kenya 47 percent of all the sexual harassment calls or SMSs come from inmates while 53 per cent originate from unknown people.

Other findings from the report reveals only 2 out of 10 women in Kenya have taken action against harassment calls, with only 6 per cent reporting the matter to the authorities.

Often women do not know how to deal with such incidences.

However, women have opted for other methods of dealing with sexual harassment that include, blocking the number, ignoring the calls, confronting the harassers, talking to family members about it and calling mobile phone companies operators for help.

In Kenya, the study shows that only 40 per cent ignore the threatening calls or SMSs, 32 per cent called mobile phone companies for help, 29 per cent told the harasser to stop while only 6 per cent reported to authorities

The research also show that Kenyan women are cautious before sharing their phone numbers, with only 10 per cent sharing their numbers once a week.

From the findings, harassment calls and SMSs to women have been normalized.

Women in urban areas are the most affected by sexual harassment calls and the majority of these communication is from unknown people.

It also shows that women are most likely to share their phone numbers when shopping and recharging their phones.