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From Africa Recovery, Vol.14#2 (July 2000), page 19

Equal enrolment is just a start

Tanzanian girls handicapped by domestic workloads, social constraints

By Lucas Liganga, Dar es Salaam

Tanzania has been more successful than many other developing countries in achieving gender equality in education, with girls making up 49.6 per cent of all enrolled primary students in 1997. Overall enrolment rates are low, however -- with only 56.7 per cent of primary-school-age children actually in school in 1998 -- while drop-out rates are high. As a result, more than a million girls still are not in school.

Yet even those who attend school face a variety of discriminatory practices that curtail learning. Girls attend school on a less regular basis than boys due to heavy household workloads, traditional practices biased against girls' education, and environments in schools that are unfriendly to girls' participation, says a study by Kuleana, a children's rights centre based in Mwanza Region.

Girls' school performance is consistently lower than that of their male peers at both primary and secondary levels, especially in subjects such as science and mathematics. The performance gap is particularly pronounced in rural districts, where more than twice as many boys than girls achieve examination scores of 50 per cent or more, probably reflecting additional pressures of agricultural labour on rural girls' time compared with their urban counterparts.

Many girls who complete primary school still are unable to read and write. According to a study by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), 33-57 per cent of girls completing standard seven in Tunduru District, in southern Tanzania, were illiterate in 1992-94.

The lack of adequate water and sanitation facilities in schools often affects girls more than boys. Unhygenic conditions and the lack of toilet doors cause many older girls to stay home several days each month during their menstrual period, notes the Kuleana study.

Children also must often perform labour for teachers, with girls typically asked to do domestic chores such as fetching water and firewood, sweeping, cooking and washing dishes, while boys do weeding and building work. "Even during their leisure time," reports UNICEF, "girls will be called to make tea, fetch water for the teachers and clean their offices. Sometimes they are sent to the market or into the garden to look for vegetables."

Outside school, girls have less time for homework because of the many chores they must perform at home or as domestic servants elsewhere, including food preparation, cleaning, washing, looking after siblings and fetching water. "We girls don't have time to play around with such things [homework], because we have a lot of work waiting for us at home," says Consolata Chitanda, a standard six girl.

Additionally, early marriage tends to cut short girls' education at the upper primary and secondary levels. In some areas, the prospect of receiving a bride price leads parents to remove their daughters from school early. In Kajiado, in the Maasai heartland, it was recently reported that 13 girls had refused to go home during school holidays out of fear of being married off by their parents.

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BOX 1:

Women's literacy: a tool for leadership

Among several female teachers and learners who recounted their personal experiences in a "voices from the grassroots" segment of the World Education Forum's final plenary session, two were from the African continent:

Laila Zaghoul, 18 years old, lives in Mokattan, a neighbourhood of Cairo, where one-third of the refuse workers in the Egyptian capital reside. Because of her family's poverty, she could not attend primary school. But at the age of 13 she was able to enroll in a vocational training programme, where she learned to read and write. "I became increasingly aware of the needs of the area where I lived, in terms of funding, health care, living conditions," she said. Over time, she trained 22 other young women, and the group became active in an array of community initiatives: annual child vaccination drives, literacy campaigns, child care, the delivery of health services, and fighting for individuals' rights. "We organized local elections, so the people could have a genuine choice when it came to choosing their representatives." Ms. Zaghoul's team is helping young women in other Cairo neighbourhoods form similar groups.

Dibou Faye, now 15, is from a village in Senegal's Diourbel region. "No one ever allowed me to go to school," she said, and at the age of 7 she began working by caring for other children. By the age of 12 she was a domestic worker in Dakar, preparing food, doing laundry, and scrubbing floors. She joined the African Children and Young Workers' Movement, a non-governmental association, which works with local communities. The movement organized literacy classes, so Ms. Faye was able, for the first time, to learn French and become literate. She and about 100 other young Senegalese eventually produced a book, The Children of Africa, to publicize children's rights. Those who could write contributed a written page each; those who could not, drew pictures. In addition to health care, shelter, and better conditions overall, she said, "We have a right to read and write."

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