Enabling and constraining family: young women building their educational paths in Tanzania

Abstract

For an increasing number of African girls and women, upgrading the level of education has become a strategy for life improvement. This paper analyses the role that family plays in enabling women's education and contributes to understanding on the interconnectivity of education, work and family in women's lives in collective societies. The analysis focuses on how young Tanzanian women perceive the role of family and education in their ‘youth task’, of becoming adult. The analysis is based on interviews with seven young Tanzanian women enrolled in non-formal secondary education and nine professional women enrolled in higher education. The results show that the women were determined to pursue higher levels of education and committed to continuous self-improvement. The women identified family both as a motivator of further education and as a constraint for their individual aims and ambitions. Respecting and maintaining good family relations were given priority over individual aims and decisions. Consequently, the reasons for women to educate themselves were drawn from the overall benefits to the future of the family and the society at large. Findings suggest a major role of the family in determining the success in improving education and professional advancement of girls and women in Tanzania.

Para un creciente número de mujeres africanas, la mejora de su nivel de educación se ha convertido en una estrategia para mejorar sus vidas. Este artículo analiza el papel que la familia juega en hacer posible la educación de mujeres. El análisis se centra en cómo mujeres de Tanzania perciben el papel de la familia y de la educación en su ‘tarea de juventud’ de convertirse en adultas. El análisis se basa en entrevistas a siete mujeres inscritas en educación secundaria informal y nueve mujeres profesionales inscritas en educación superior. Los resultados demuestran que las mujeres estaban decididas a perseguir niveles de educación más altos y comprometidas con el propio desarrollo personal continuo. Las mujeres identificaron a la familia como un agente motivador a la vez que como una restricción para sus objetivos individuales. Se dio prioridad al mantenimiento de buenas relaciones familiares por encima de decisiones individuales. Por consiguiente, las razones por las que las mujeres se estudian fueron extraídas del conjunto de beneficios para el futuro de la familia. Los resultados sugieren que la familia juega un papel fundamental en determinar el éxito en la mejora de la educación y el progreso profesional de mujeres en Tanzania.

Keywords:

• women
• family
• educational paths
• youth task
• Tanzania
• sub-Saharan Africa

Palabras claves:

• mujeres
• la familia
• trayectorias educativas
• tarea de juventud
• Tanzania
• África subsahariana

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr Elina Lehtomäki for valuable comments on the earlier drafts of the article and Mrs Magreth Matonya for language interpretation and for providing insights to the Tanzanian family culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Hanna Posti-Ahokas, Ph.D. (Education), Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland. In her doctoral dissertation: ‘Tanzanian female students’ perspectives on the relevance of secondary education' (2014), Hanna studied the current problems related to access, quality and transitions in Tanzanian secondary education from a female students' perspective.

Mari-Anne Okkolin, M.Soc.Sc, Ph.D. (Education; research based). Post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development at the University of the Free State (South Africa) and Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Mari-Anne is sociologist and educationalist, whose research interests focus on gender, education and development, teacher education and teaching profession, human capabilities, and qualitative research methodology.

Notes

1. According to the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO, 2012), female gross enrollment in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa has raised from 22% in 1999 to 36% in 2010. During the same period, female gross enrollment in tertiary education has raised from 4% to 7%. In 2010, the gross enrollment rate for Tanzanian female students in secondary education was 30.4% and 6.4% in higher education (URT, 2010a).

2. The economic activity rate or the labour force participation rate refers to engagement in economic activity by working or looking for work.

3. In fact, in the age group of 25–34 years, the proportion of economically active is 96.8%. (United Republic of Tanzania, Integrated Labour Force Survey 2006).

4. Gross enrolment (GER) in lower secondary education increased from 20.2% in 2006 to 47.3% in 2010. Net enrolment rates increased from 13% in 2006 to 31% in 2010. GER in higher education in 2010 was 5.3%, of which 35.3% comprised female students. The decreasing trend in the proportion of female students is evident at different educational levels. (URT, Basic Education Statistics 2010).

5. The official age of transition to upper secondary school is 16 or 17.

6. See also the UNICEF report ‘Cities and Children’ in Tanzania (UNICEF, 2012).

7. See https://www.jyu.fi/ytk/laitokset/yfi/en/research/clusters/concluded-projects/educatedtanzania for more information on the project.

8. See (Okkolin, 2013) for a detailed description of the methods used.

9. For comparison purposes, a taxi ride within the city area would cost 20,000 TSH and a loaf of bread 800–2000 TSH.

10. Tanzania gained independence in 1961. The United Republic of Tanzania was formed in 1964 as a result of the union of the mainland of Tanganyika and the archipelago of Zanzibar.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been conducted as part of a joint research project of University of Jyväskylä, Finland and University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania titled ‘Educated girls in and women in Tanzania – Sociocultural interpretations on the meaning of formal education’, funded by the Academy of Finland.