That women in most East African societies, including the Nandi among whom I did field work, and the closely culturally related Maasai, suffer under patriarchal oppression is not to be denied. But it is not an unmitigated oppression in which women have no rights at all. It is true that husbands have the formal right to beat wives, and that a husband who failed to beat a wife who refused to acknowledge his authority would be viewed as weak. But this doesn't mean that all husbands beat their wives all the time, and that there is community approval for this. There is certainly sanction by gossip of men who are seen as beating their wives too often, or for trivial reasons, or for inflicting severe bodily harm.
Women have certain well-articulated rights, though certainly less than men's.
It's prabably true that sending your husband to jail would be viewed as an outrage in most communities. With regard to choice in marriage, the agreement of the girl is supposed to be obtained. Among the Nandi and among the Massai, a kinswoman is assigned to make sure that the girl is really willing, and without her say-so, the marriage is not supposed to go forward. This obviously does not mean that there cannot be abuses, in which girls are pressured into marriages they really don't want. But those events should be viewed as abuses.