Negotiating gender norms in the context of equal access to education in north-western Tigray, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Girls in Tigray region in North Ethiopia have over the past decade started to outnumber boys up through primary and secondary education in terms of enrolment rates. But underage marriage still hampers rural girls’ pursuit of education. Left unchallenged by governmental efforts to address marriage of underage girls is the female virginity ideal and the burden of sexual morality which girls continue to shoulder, and that sustains the practice. It is also a fact that despite positive enrolment rates, girls score on average lower than boys on the national exams. This article explores whether the modesty that girls are socialised into through the virginity ideal in order to acquire respect in the community impinges on the assertive drive and energy necessary for educational success. This ethnographic study, which focused on gendered processes of social reproduction and change by utilising education as the site for investigation, is based on long-term involvement in the administrative district Asgede Tsimbla Wereda in north-western Tigray from 1993 to the present. What will be addressed here are gender norms that continue to be reproduced in spite of the significant changes in Ethiopia’s laws and policies to amend former gender injustice, and which have brought unprecedented numbers of Ethiopian girls into school.

KEYWORDS:

• Girls’ education
• marriage of underage girls
• virginity
• normative femaleness
• boys’ responsibility
• north-western Tigray
• Ethiopia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The levels of administration concurring with elected decision-making bodies are federal, region, wereda (district) and tabia/kebele (sub-district).

2. According to the 2007 Census, 95.6% are Orthodox Christians and 4% are Muslims in the close to ethnically homogenous region of Tigray. On a federal level the numbers of Orthodox Christians are 43.5%, Muslims 33.9%, and Protestants 18.6% (FDRE-PCC 2008).

3. This translation of grade 9 student Faley Darcha’s poem only paraphrases the Tigrinya rimes in order to communicate its meaning.

4. However, the socio-culturally preferred age gap of 7–10 years between the woman and the man (which still prevails) was rather reaffirmed than changed during the struggle when the boys’ minimum age was set to 22.

5. Medically, the hymen is a reminiscent from the foetal stage. While the extent to which a girl has a hymen or not at birth can differ, the state of the hymen will also be in a natural process of change as the girl grows older, irrespective of sexual or other physical activities. In fact, if it happens that the hymen is still imperforated at the time when the girl starts menstruating, the menstrual blood cannot pass.

6. This point was also mentioned by the local leader of Women’s Association of Tigray. The reason I can assert that parents manipulate with their daughters age is because I have known many of these girls since they were born. I would also cross-check age by asking parents about the age gap between their offspring.

7. These two quotes are from the documentary film made to disseminate the findings from my doctoral research back to the community in Tigray. When showing the film at a meeting the wereda education bureau arranged with bureaucrats, school directors/teachers, community representatives and parents before the start of the school-year in mid-September 2015, ‘everybody’ laughed (in disbelief) when the latter of these two girls claimed she did not have, and did not want to have, a boyfriend while still in school.