Female teachers in Tanzania: an analysis of gender, poverty and constrained capabilities

ABSTRACT

Tanzania has made great strides in improving access to education; however, concerns about the quality of this education persist due to reports of teacher absenteeism, distraction and lack of preparation. Given this situation, this study aimed to investigate teachers’ values and contexts to provide nuanced understandings of teacher practice and behaviour, particularly with regard to how gender intersects with these. Ethnographic case studies were conducted at three Tanzanian schools and findings demonstrated that although men and women experienced similar material conditions, there were marked differences between their opportunities and constraints, which female teachers could readily relate to instances of absenteeism and distraction. A feminist interpretation of the capability approach was used to reflect on female teachers’ capabilities, constraints and agency; and socialist feminist theory was used to further elaborate on why male and female teachers differ in their valued capabilities, their levels of constraint and their actions resulting from negotiating constraint.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers/educators
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• femininities
• social theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sharon Tao is an Education Adviser at Cambridge Education and has worked on donor-funded education programmes across Africa and South Asia. She was awarded the Institute of Education-University College London Director’s Prize for her PhD research, which not only forms the basis for this article, but also underpins her work in-country on teacher development, gender and inclusion, school improvement and the enhancement of social justice in and through education.

Notes

1 This voluntaristic concept of ‘opportunism’ is particularly problematic as it is underpinned by rational choice theory, which assumes that teachers’ actions are guided by a desire to maximise personal utility. This econometric view of behaviour has been critiqued for its assumption of consistency of action, lack of acknowledgement of social relations and social structures, and occlusion of motivations beyond utility fulfilment (cf. Sen 1997).

2 Sen (2009, 30) cautions against evaluating just the achieved functioning or outcome a person has (irrespective of how she got there), versus evaluating the way a person reaches that achievement (ideally through her agency and choice of her own).

3 These functionings included: (1) Being able to live in a satisfactory home; (2) Being able to take care of family; (3) Being healthy; (4) Being able to earn extra income; (5) Being able to help students learn; (6) Being able to upgrade qualifications; and (7) Being respected.

4 All names have been changed to protect the identity and confidentiality of participants.

5 Stromquist (1998, 27) notes that prior to colonisation, African women enjoyed levels of status and prestige similar to those of men and engaged in a division of labour based on complementarity rather than asymmetrical power relations.

6 It should be noted that although post-independence Tanzania was conceived as a socialist state and President Nyerere strongly supported women’s equality, politics in Tanzania came to be organised around a version of socialism that normalised a very gendered ideal of the nuclear family (Lal 2010). Thus, it should not be assumed that a non-capitalist, socialist society is free from endorsing and reinforcing gender roles.

7 For an additional CA analysis of Tanzanian women’s freedom to upgrade and exercise educational agency, see Okkolin (2016).

8 Figures are taken from the Arusha Municipal Council Education report, published in March 2010.