NAIROBI — The grainy mobile phone video shows a mob of Kenyan men surround a woman and grab and yank her clothes until she is naked. Several such videos have emerged recently of attacks by males who deem a woman to be provocatively dressed.
The attacks have created a groundswell of anger that saw protesters, most of them women, flood downtown Nairobi on Monday.
The hashtag #MyDressMyChoice is trending in Kenya’s social media, as this East African country sees a clash between new, Western lifestyles, and traditional African ways.
Rachel Machua wore what she called ‘‘a little black dress . . . my normal outfit’’ to Monday’s protest. She views the recent attacks as stemming from socioeconomic conditions: Lower income men are attacking successful, well-dressed women.
The attacks are not overtly religious in nature, though this is a conservative, mostly Christian country. The women at the march described ‘‘normal’’ levels of sexual harassment over the years and said that peers will warn other women that ‘‘you’re gonna get undressed’’ for wearing a particular outfit.
‘‘Kenyan men are in different groups. My father wanted me to be here and said you can dress however you want. Then there are others who think you are out of their reach and they try to victimize you,’’ said Machua, 26, who runs an aid group called Transforming Generations.
Women play an active role in Kenyan society. The country’s foreign minister is a woman, though few women hold high-ranking elected office. Parliament is a virtual men’s club, unlike in neighboring Rwanda, where more than half of Parliament is female.
After the recent attacks, elderly Kenyan women are said to have rescued the naked victims by giving them a shawl to cover up.
About 10 percent of the approximately 1,000 people marching through the streets were men.
In a separate development Monday, Kenyan police said they had carried out raids on two mosques in Mombasa in an operation that killed one person and resulted in 251 arrests. The raids netted eight grenades and a pistol. The authorities said more than 500 security personnel took part in the raids.
The police said the person killed had tried to throw a grenade at them as they moved into the Masjid Musa mosque, a place of worship that officials say also harbors radical Muslims.
Officials have said that some Kenyan Muslims have links with the Somali terrorist group Al Shabab.