Written by: Mildred Yeo Wen Min
Visual by: Erica Nido
UNESCO estimates that 132 million girls worldwide are currently out of school. When it comes to girls and women accessing education, it hasn’t been easy. There are different factors ranging from poverty to cultures and traditions that cause these women to be unable to access education. Information was gleaned from research conducted by Neema Silas Mollel and Ren Chong within the Tanzanian community. Their survey sought out to investigate socio-cultural factors affecting girls’ school attendance.
Each country in Africa has a unique set of traditions and cultural practices. According to HelloTanzania, a ritual known as “unyago” in Eastern Africa is practiced to celebrate the coming of age of girls or during weddings. Older women gather to teach young girls from ages 13 to 17 about sex and conjugal life. This ritual causes girls to be absent from school, with 66.7% of the respondents agreeing that this ritual is a contributing factor in eventual increases in school dropout rates among young girls. During an informal discussion with their teachers, they claim that girls’ behaviors change drastically after undergoing unyago. These changes subsequently led to diminishing performance in school, with young girls isolating themselves from others who had yet to undergo unyago, increasing use of vulgar language usage, as well as exhibiting rude behavior towards their teachers. In some cases, it led to girls becoming pregnant, which consequently resulted in them quitting school altogether. The ritual also distracted them from school as they started thinking about boyfriends, personal beauty, and marriage.
The study also revealed that within the Tanzanian community, education for girls is not prioritized. Parents usually pushed their sons to attend school and 70% of the respondents agreed that they preferred boys getting an education rather than girls. This resulted in discrimination and unequal opportunities for women.
Unfortunately, girls are relegated to doing household chores or farm works, turning them into family laborers who produce to benefit men. On the other hand, even if some parents allowed their daughters to attend school, they would be unwilling to support them fully, while tending to favor their sons’ educational pursuits.
A 2004 study conducted by UNICEF found that if the family’s financial status was not stable, then they would be unable to afford the cost of education for all their children. Hence, boys are given priority over girls.
The practice of early marriages is known widely throughout the world and in Tanzania, this is no exception. According to UNICEF, Tanzania has the 11th highest absolute number of child brides in the world. Shockingly, the laws of this country encourage this custom of early marriage, as the Law of Child Act of 2009 defines a child as a person under the age of 18 years old, while the Law of Marriage Act of 1971 gives freedom to parents to marry off a girl when she is only 15 years old. This cultural practice puts an end to a girl’s education as she drops out of school to get married. In other cases, parents force their daughters to quit school and get married, overruling their chances to make their own decisions for themselves. Additionally, early marriages tend to result in severe physical, psychological, and emotional effects on these young girls. Some psychological effects include symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression while examples of physical effects are having an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, cervical cancer, and miscarriages during pregnancy.
With these socio-cultural factors affecting girls’ and women’s rights to seek education in Tanzania, it is important to understand that there have been efforts to help them. One such endeavor is The Girls Foundation of Tanzania. It is an organization that is dedicated to supporting these women that live in extreme poverty and are unable to get an education, by giving them learning opportunities outside the classroom.
Works Cited:
“Hello Tanzania Best Safaris & Wildlife Tours.” Hello Tanzania, 28 Sept. 2019, hellotanzania.com/zanzibar-culture-2/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
Girls Not Brides. “Tanzania - Child Marriage Around The World. Girls Not Brides.” Girls Not Brides, 16 Dec. 2018, www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/tanzania/#:~:text=31%25%20of%20girls%20in%20Tanzania,Tabora%20and%2055%25%20in%20Mara. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
“Girls’ Education.” World Bank, 2014, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation#:~:text=All%20these%20factors%20combined%20can,of%20upper%2Dsecondary%20school%20age. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
“HOME | The Girls Foundation of Tanzania.” TGFT, 2016, www.girlsfoundationoftanzania.org/#:~:text=The%20Girls%20Foundation%20of%20Tanzania%20is%20a%20community%20dedicated%20to,women%20living%20in%20extreme%20poverty. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
Mollel, Neema and Ren Chong. “Socio-cultural Constraints of Girls’ Access to Education in Mtwara District, Tanzania.” Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2017. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
Comentarios