ABSTRACT
In 2006, when we met for the first time, seven of the ten women were finishing their Master’s degree studies. Most of the women were in their early thirties: two of them were aged 32 and two 33. The youngest woman was 26 and the oldest was 53; the other participants were aged 28, 30, 36 and 40 (some biographical characteristics are summarised in Table A.1 in the Appendices). Leyla, Genefa, Hanifa and Amana1 were the first research participants2
whom I met and I introduce them here accordingly. Leyla is the oldest of this group of women, aged 533 at the time that we
met. She belongs to the age group in Tanzania that used to carry out one-year national (military) service, which she undertook after finishing her advanced level of secondary education. Leyla has three children and she is a single parent, as she is widowed, although she had been divorced from her husband prior to his death. She is a Kiswahili and Geography teacher by profession and had worked for a long time in a boys’ school. Her mother was a farmer and she had four years of primary education; further schooling was not considered to be necessary. Leyla’s father was employed by the government and he used to work as a field assistant (training other farmers). He had six years of primary schooling and some agricultural studies as his educational background. Leyla (the second child) has four sisters and two brothers; in addition, her cousin used to live with them. Most of her siblings completed secondary school, and the firstborn supported the education and schooling of his younger brother and sisters remarkably. Genefa, aged 40 when we met, is the second oldest within this group of
women. She is married with four children. Her husband is employed and posted elsewhere; consequently Genefa has the main responsibility for their household and for bringing up the children. Genefa also used to work as a Kiswahili teacher in a secondary school. Her mother was a housewife and she had not attended school, only some adult education courses. Genefa noted that she could barely read or write. Her father was a police officer, but after an accident, he was no longer able to work. Hence, Genefa and her siblings, her two sisters and two brothers, were mainly supported by their oldest sister (also a police officer). Hanifa (33) is married and she already had one daughter in 2006. She is an
English teacher by profession. Hanifa is the fourth child in the family and has
four sisters and two brothers. In addition, her uncle and their grandmother used to live with them. Her mother was a housewife and had three years of primary education schooling; her father had been to the teacher training college and had some further education. He used to work as a head district education officer. All of Hanifa’s siblings are educated, but none of them to university level. Amana (36) has two children and they are living with their father and his
new family. Amana is also a teacher by profession. She has four sisters and two brothers, and the extended family members living with them included one cousin. Amana’s mother had four years of primary education (which Amana said was typical at that time), was a housewife and took care of the family shamba (field). Her father was a veterinary surgeon. He used to work in the town, and came back to the village at the weekends. All of Amana’s four sisters are teachers and her oldest brother has a Master’s degree. Amisa is the youngest of the research participants, aged 26 when we met.
She co-habits with her boyfriend. Amisa is the firstborn in her family and has two sisters and two brothers: the last-born was enrolled in Form IV in secondary education and three others were doing their Master’s degrees. Her mother and father got divorced and all of the children were living with the mother, who took care of them without any support from the father. Her mother holds a Bachelor’s degree and works as an accountant. Apart from the nuclear family, Amisa’s aunt and cousins used to live with them. They were remarkably assisted by her grandparents; namely, the parents of Amisa’s mother. Rabia (30) and Amisa are friends from university and I carried out a paired
interview with them. At the time we met, she had a boyfriend. Rabia had worked as a teacher, as had many of the research participants. Her mother had gone to teacher training college and worked as a primary school teacher; her father had gone to university and had a degree in biology and chemistry; he worked as a secondary school teacher ; and two of Rabia’s four sisters also worked as teachers. Rabia comes from a rather remote village and they used to have a big farm that was mainly kept for the family’s needs. They had a large extended family, and apart from her grandparents, some other relatives also used to live with them. The parents of Wema (32) are divorced, and, like Amisa, Wema too, together
with her younger sister and older brother (who passed away in an accident), had lived with and were raised and nurtured by their mother, with no assistance from their father. Wema’s family was supported by their uncle. Apart from the two siblings, two of their cousins lived with them. Wema’s mother holds a Master’s degree and she was employed in the teaching profession; similarly, Wema’s father had a Master’s degree, and he too worked as a teacher. Her late brother was a doctor and her sister has a university degree. At the time we met, Wema was married. Tumaini (33) was introduced to me by Wema. She had worked as a pro-
gramme manager in the areas of nutrition and health care and HIV/Aids, and when we met in 2008, she was finishing her Master’s Degree in Public Health
(to complement her previous B.Sc. Degree in Home Economics and Human Nutrition). She has three sisters, although the oldest one has passed away; apart from her sisters, three of her cousins lived with their family. Her mother has a certificate in teaching and she teaches political science at primary school. Tumaini’s father is a prison officer; thus, she used to live in the prison camp staff quarters. “Maybe Std VII”, that is, seven years in primary education, is what Tumaini considered that her father had obtained in terms of formal schooling. One of Tumaini’s sisters is following in her footsteps and she has just finished her first degree; the other did not perform so well, according to Tumaini, and her parents are paying for her to go to college for a certificate in accounting. Rehema (28) was living with her father and stepmother when we met in
2008. She holds a Bachelor’s degree and did not have plans to continue further, at least at that time; she worked as a teacher and a university lecturer. Rehema is the firstborn in the family and she has one sister and two brothers. Both of her biological parents are teachers by profession; her step-mother also used to work in a teacher training college but when we met, she was a housewife and had a small clothing business; her father also made a living from his businesses. Apart from the immediate family members, one cousin and one nephew were living with them. Rehema had had an accident as a child, resulting in a physical impairment, but this was not severe enough to prohibit her from functioning. Naomi (32) is married and in 2008, she already had a son. Naomi’s back-
ground is also in education and she used to work as an English teacher. She is the firstborn in the family and has three younger sisters. Their aunt used to live with them. Naomi described how they used to live in ‘educational surroundings’, because of the educational and professional backgrounds of their parents: her mother holds a BA and her father has a PhD; her mother (retired) used to work as an executive educational officer, and her father (retired) as a priest, but also because her parents used to run an education centre. One of her sisters has a doctorate, and two others were studying at the university at the time of our conversation. To add and summarise the research participants’ familial backgrounds, a
few more remarks are useful: firstly, the women diverged in their backgrounds with regard to geographical location and ethnic group; secondly, they represent different socio-economic groups, yet most of them described their childhood families as middle-class, having had a normal and moderate standard of living; the educational background of their mothers varied from no schooling at all (poor writing and reading skills) to Master’s degrees, and their fathers’ backgrounds from six years in primary education to doctorate level; they came from families with three to six children, and basically all of the siblings were educated to secondary education level, and in most cases beyond that; in the case of three of the childhood families, their parents had divorced and two of the women were basically raised and taken care of by their mothers; one had lived with and been supported by her father, with whom (and with his
new wife) she was also living at the time we met; at the time of our conversations, three of the women were living with their boyfriends and one was dating but living alone in her own house. The other five were married with between one and four children, although two of them had divorced: one (later widowed) had dependent children, while the other participant’s children were living with their father’s new family. At the time we met, all of the research participants were doing their Master’s
degree studies, barring one, who held a Bachelor’s degree from the university; five of them were finishing their theses in education, two in development studies, and one in mass media and communication.4 In addition, two women held B.Sc. Degrees in Home Economics and Human Nutrition, although one was just completing her M.Sc. Degree in Public Health. Eight of the women were qualified teachers. Apart from Wema, whom I encountered and conversed with in Finland, I met the women in Dar es Salaam in 2006 and 2008. In the next chapter I explain how the research process was empirically carried out.
