In this article, I examine a narrative that on the surface could be backlash to gender equality efforts: that after years of policy attention to girls, Kenya's "boy child" has been neglected. Through a content analysis of Kenyan online newspaper texts spanning the past two decades, I chart the evolution of this discourse, finding that it was present as early as 2000, intensified around 2010, and began to produce concrete actions around 2013. I argue that the narrative is a reaction to expanded women's rights, but not always in the sense of negative backlash. Some boy child claims-makers were indeed concerned with a decline in men's power. However, others, mostly women, used the boy child narrative to redirect attention to issues that profoundly affect the well-being of women such as violence and the struggle to find a partner. These results point to the value of a discursive spectrum approach for analysis of potential backlash to gender equality as well as discussions around policy attention to boys and men.

中文翻译：

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讨论光谱：肯尼亚“被忽视”男孩的叙述。

在这篇文章中，我研究了一种叙述，即表面上可能会对性别平等努力产生反作用：经过对女孩的多年政策关注，肯尼亚的“男孩”被忽略了。通过对过去二十年中肯尼亚在线报纸文本的内容分析，我对这种话语的发展进行了图表分析，发现它早在2000年就出现了，在2010年左右加剧，并在2013年左右开始采取具体行动。叙事是对扩大妇女权利的一种反应，但并不总是在消极反弹的意义上。一些男孩声称的制造者确实对男人的力量下降感到担忧。但是，其他人，大多数是妇女，利用男孩的叙述将注意力转移到深刻影响妇女福祉的问题上，例如暴力和寻找伴侣的斗争。