ABSTRACT
As previously pointed out, in the global South, the educational opportunities and outcomes of girls and women are generally lower than those of boys and men. This is the case in particular when moving from the lower to the advanced and higher levels of education. In 2006, when I initially met with the women whose stories are narrated in this book, 49 per cent of Tanzanian students enrolled in primary education were female; 47.5 per cent of first-year secondary school students and 40.5 per cent of the advanced level of secondary education students were women; 30 per cent of the Master’s degree students were female. Evidently, there is a declining pattern in female students’ access to education, retention rates and attainment in the education system. With only 1.4 per cent of Tanzanian people enrolled in higher learning institutions in 2013, it is clear that only ‘one in a million’ Tanzanian women have reached higher education (HE). As noted in the 2013 national Basic Education Statistics, still the majority of students enrolled in HE are males (GER 7.9 per cent in comparison to 3.5 per cent for females), and still, the total enrolment is extremely low compared to the theoretical school age population of 20-23 years old1 (URT 2013). To put the Tanzanian women’s achievements into perspective in the sub-
Saharan African context, a brief statistical glimpse is helpful. A cross-national higher education report in Africa (Bunting, Cloete and Van Schalkwyk 2014), which included flagship universities in eight sub-Saharan African countries (including Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritius, Uganda and Kenya), pointed out that during their 11-year follow-up period from 2001 to 2011, the total (female and male) number of Master’s student enrolments grew rapidly in most of the universities. However, in Tanzania, at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), selected for the study because of its status as the ‘most prominent public university in its country’ (ibid.), the total dropped by 76 per cent over the five-year period, from 2,165 (N) in 2007 to 522 (N) in 2011. According to the report, in 2011 only three universities
had 50 per cent or more female students in undergraduate programmes, while four universities, including UDSM, had undergraduate female proportions below 40 per cent; the average female enrolment in doctoral programmes across the eight universities was 37 per cent. At UDSM, the proportion of female students enrolled in the undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral programmes were 39 per cent, 37 per cent and 28 per cent respectively. Globally, the widening gender gap and declining trend in female students’
educational progression is influenced by in-school and out-of-school factors. In addition to the factors related to the school environment, girls’ and women’s poor educational outcomes have been explained by political and institutional factors (supply) and by socio-cultural and socio-economic factors (demand). The influence of social factors on the demand for female education is clear when we look more closely at the parental and familial decision-making on whether to invest in female education or not; similarly, gender ideas and ideologies at the household and community levels may promote differentiated educational opportunities and outcomes for females and males (Odaga and Heneveld 1995; Unterhalter et al. 2014). In Tanzania, socio-economic and socio-cultural factors have been a part of policy discussions for over 40 years; they were first raised soon after the country gained independence in 1961 (Buchert 1994, Mbilinyi 1991); however, recent studies emphasise that similar challenges still exist (e.g. Colclough, Al-Samarrai and Tembon 2003; Okkolin, Lehtomäki and Bhalalusesa 2010; Unterhalter and Heslop 2011). Therefore, in the analysis of education and schooling, and to tackle gender
inequalities in education, it is of critical importance to pay attention to agencies, institutions and social relations at various levels of the education establishment (Unterhalter 2003a; Colclough, Al-Samarrai and Tembon 2003; King, Palmer and Hayman 2005). Depending on positioning, different levels and aspects may be emphasised: one option is to look at the education and training system itself; another possibility is to refer to the wider non-educational environment outside the educational establishment. Analysis of the noneducational environment may expand further to the legal, economic and political levels and to social and familial arrangements (Figure 2.1). The environments that enable girls’ and women’s education and schooling,
and factors that impact on female students’ educational advancement, wellbeing and agency, are intertwined in various and complex ways. Clearly, attending school is not only about schooling as such; quite the contrary: female education and schooling is impacted on by political and institutional factors and even more importantly by socio-economic and socio-cultural factors. The policy initiatives which aim to reduce the gender gap and inequalities in education are mainly implemented in-school and targeted towards the school-related factors, in line with the mandate and scope of educational policy. However, on the basis of knowledge and understanding of the complexities and intersecting factors that have an impact on girls’ and women’s schooling and educational advancement, this emphasis alone is insufficient and needs to be complemented with the factors that are essentially
part of the social and familial levels of the enabling environment – as seen in Amisa’s remark above. Apart from the challenge that arises from the singular focus on in-school
environments to advance female educational advancement, the difficulty is based inherently on the very understanding of gender equality and equity in education. Research on education, gender and development has shown how different understandings of gender, equality and education generate different approaches with which to pursue gender equality in education, and hence different ways in which to assess development and change. The mainstream understanding, approach and assessment of social development – including gender equality and equity in education – is dominated by policy-informed, macro-oriented and quantitative-based approaches. However, as suggested by the concepts of ‘gross and net enrolment rates’ and the ‘gender parity index’, for instance, they only measure the equality in terms of amounts and numbers. Yet gender equality and equity only rests on, but is neither synonymous with nor an index of, gender parity. Consequently, if educational development and advancement is to be comprehended more as educational well-being2 and agency notions are brought into the agenda (Figure 2.1) – as is the case in the international and Tanzanian policy narratives and discourses – this approach alone is inadequate and needs to be complemented. Reflecting international policy commitments, the current educational policies
in Tanzania encompass both gender parity and gender equality understandings,
with quantitative and qualitative objectives (URT 1995, 2008). In consequence, both kinds of approaches and assessment are needed to realise equality and equity in education. The challenge embedded in the understanding of ‘substantive equality’ in education lies, however, in disclosing the complex relationships between structure and agency, that is, the process of ‘what has been reached and realised and how’, as previously discussed. On the one hand, this implies the need to understand the enabling and/or constraining social structures which constitute both the context and the outcome of people’s well-being and agency; on the other hand, it necessitates understanding the critical counterpart for the structure, that is, the subjective self: presumably, an intentional and rational agent, aiming at something and capable of making rational judgements and choices. This book is based on such a methodological relationalism, which, by definition, draws attention to positions constituted by social relations. Hence, the women’s educational well-being and agency (Figure 2.1) is understood to be socially constructed, as an interplay between social conditioning and agential responses; as a process, in which the women posit themselves and make educational choices in relation to their socio-cultural structures, that is here, their school environments and social and familial environments, which all reflect the idea of Tanzanian woman. In my study I have been essentially interested in the ‘structures of oppor-
tunity’. Women’s narratives, in turn, represent the multifaceted negotiations and processes through which individual human beings locate themselves in social structures. Different from the macro-oriented and quantitative-based approaches, and to complement the information and knowledge base with which to assess educational advancement, a qualitative and actor-centered research methodology has been employed. To capture subjective insights into critical issues and processes behind educational advancement, and to identify the factors that support the construction of educational well-being and agency, the stories of highly educated Tanzanian women have been collected. Hence, this book is substantially about the experiences and insights of ten Tanzanian women, and their narratives are at the heart of the book. In the next section, I introduce the women and the study on which this book draws.
