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This paper primarily aimed at examining the influence households' demographic characteristics on the level of their financial literacy in Tanzania. The paper employs secondary data from the FinScope survey conducted by Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSDT). To do so, the study employed both bivariate and multivariate analytical techniques. The study, reveals that the adult population exhibits large financial literacy gap- and, therefore, adults should not be considered as a homogenous group- rather gender, age, education and income levels of the households, which are showcased in this study, to also be taken into consideration while designing financial literacy improvement public initiatives. In particular, the study concludes that men are more inclined to have higher levels of financial literacy than women something which limits their financial decisions making ability. It is also concluded that younger households and those with higher income levels are equipped with higher financial literacy levels. Likewise, more educated and employed households tend to have higher levels of financial literacy. It, therefore, follows that programs to foster financial knowledge among households should be targeted at marginalized groups like women, the elderly and those with low incomes and educational attainment. As the main contribution of the research, it is highlighted that this is a pioneer study in the Tanzanian context, by proposing a model that identifies which socioeconomic and demographic factors influence the propensity for a low or high financial literacy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simba and Yanga are popular soccer teams in Tanzania and are known as long-time joking partners. Several cartoons have emerged in relation to their joking relationship. This paper examines how gender is represented in the joking cartoons between these two soccer teams in Tanzania. The focus of this paper is on the cartoons that display male and female characters. The guiding questions are: How is gender represented in these joking cartoons? What are the themes conveyed by that representation? What is the broader role of such gender depiction in the entire Tanzanian society? The data for this study were collected from blogs and websites. By using Social Identity Theory, this study found that some cartoons seem to disadvantage women by depicting them as incapable of fighting for success in life as they are portrayed as failures. The study also revealed that the themes conveyed by gender representation in these cartoons are sports (victory and defeat), marriage, love and sex, religion, leisure and entertainment, reproduction and decision-making. Despite the fact that these cartoons are about jokes in sports, they demonstrate a traditional stereotypical representation of women as unsuccessful and compliant and men as successful and decisive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tanzanian legislation for women's rights is a product of decades of indigenous women's struggles and considered amongst the most progressive in Africa. However, implementation has been problematic and some elements in the current discourse appear to push back against gender equality with an essentialist framing of women and men as naturally different. This paper draws on the perspectives of 144 women and 144 men, in four rural communities in different regions of Tanzania, to build an understanding of how they perceive gender equality, and how their perceptions relate to decision-making, women earning incomes, women as homemakers, and control over assets. Understanding gender as a performance we contextualise our analysis through a historical overview of women's struggles to secure rights from colonial times to the present day. We find that while local discourse appears to embrace the idea of gender equality, practice remains quite different with the threat of sanctions restricting the scope for re-negotiation of gender. The paper demonstrates how the continuous performance, reproduction and renegotiation of gender takes place as part of everyday life, as women and men seek to secure their personal well-being in a context of limited cultural and economic options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tanzanian landscape has a long history with exiled nationalist organisations from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The case of Mozambique is unique. It was in Dar es Salaam that FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) was born in 1962; but the great Mozambican nationalist Edward Mondlane was assassinated in the same city in 1969. This paper presents the ruins of the FRELIMO camp in Nachingwea, Tanzania, to elaborate the state of preservation of the monuments and how such preservation may contribute to sustainable peace between these two neighbouring countries. There are recognisable photographs and written historical documents concerning FRELIMO in both Mozambican and Tanzanian libraries, museums, and archives. Adding the landscape as another layer of evidence juxtaposes the limitations unveiled in other sources; enhances our understanding of the activities that took place during exile including those of the subalterns (residential houses, food carriers, couriers, recruiting sergeants and foot soldiers); and underlines the process of how sites of African liberation struggles are remembered and memorialised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the critical issues deliberated amongst researchers on gender and education is that of choosing and decision-making. Often, the focus of analysis is framed through the concept of agency. In this paper, the analytical focus is on educational advancement and agency. The paper is based on narratives of 10 highly educated Tanzanian women. Employing the human development and capabilities approach, the paper aims to elaborate to what extent the women had the freedom to exercise educational agency, in what ways their beings and doings were in accordance with ‘the idea of Tanzanian woman’, including the hegemonic idea of adequate and appropriate education for girls and women, and how they aimed to become something else. By listening to the women's narratives and analysing their choices and decision-making processes, four kinds of agency freedoms were identified. In the paper, these agency notions are re-presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Young men in coastal Tanzania are often blamed for damaging marine habitats by engaging in unsustainable and destructive fishing practices, including dynamite fishing, but their perceptions have not been sufficiently documented. While marine scientists, international environmental NGOs, and activists have called attention to the destructive fishing practices' devastating impacts, insights into the contextual factors that motivate those who engage in dynamite fishing are limited. Additionally, risk perceptions and concerns regarding the environmental impact and dangers of dynamite fishing among the youth are also understudied. This paper provides ethnographic insights into the historical and contextual factors underlying dynamite fishing in rural coastal Mtwara. It draws on ethnographic data gathered through participant observation, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with residents from two neighboring coastal villages – one located inside a marine protected area (MPA), and another located outside the MPA's boundary. The paper first examines the views of elderly men and women to provide the historical context of dynamite fishing in coastal Mtwara. It then juxtaposes youth perceptions regarding marine conservation and dynamite fishing in the two villages, vis-à-vis ongoing efforts to curb destructive fishing practices and to enhance marine biodiversity and ecotourism in the region. Results of the study reveal that unresolved tensions between the MPA authorities and local fishers surrounding enforcement practices and unfulfilled gear-exchange-related promises, and allegations of poor governance, are important contextual factors in the persistence of dynamite fishing. The paper concludes by articulating possible remedial measures to mitigate the tensions between youth concerns about their livelihoods, and the goals of marine biodiversity conservation as a way forward in preventing dynamite fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chance of a secondary education for young girls who might have otherwise been among many out-of-school youth cultivates aspirations for their future. While aspirations to be educated expand the possibilities of opportunities, they also go unfulfilled in an environment of low achievement rates, high unemployment and constraining gender norms that can leave many secondary graduates disempowered. This study examines how aspirations, agency and future well-being are linked through 4 years of longitudinal data from interviews with girls in a technical and vocational school in rural Tanzania. Conceptually, the paper puts forward a framework within a capability approach to consider how aspirations and agency are oriented toward valued well-being. It also draws inspiration from Appadurai’s use of aspirations as a cultural concept that is future and change oriented and socially embedded. Finally, the body of scholarship that frames Bourdieu’s notion of agency as productive is drawn upon to illuminate whether and how girls are agentic in acting toward their aspirations. Bringing these conceptualizations together, the empirical analysis shows how aspirations and agency are dialectically related and socially situated, allowing for openings in agency to occur even when faced with gendered constraints to aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the role that women in Mangio Village, Mwanga District, Tanzania play in rural livelihoods in the context of a changing climate. Data were collected in 2011 at community, household and individual levels. Methods of data collection included focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews with household members, individuals and key informants. Qualitative data analyses were done using NVIVO software. Results indicate that despite having limited access to livelihood assets compared to men, women play an important role in enhancing the adaptive capacity that Mangio Village has to climate change. Their roles extend from family units to the community level where they contribute in all the major spontaneous and planned strategies that the village has taken up in response to a changing climate among other drivers. Key to women’s contribution is their social networks and in the labor required in new activities that enhance adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education policy and research tend to be dominated by the messaging systems of the North. De Sousa Santos argues that we need to start listening to the South and that we need to develop a sociology of absences. This paper attempts to engage with some of these absences by deconstructing participation in higher education, in quantitative and qualitative terms, in Ghana and Tanzania. The paper is based on interim findings from a research project on Economic and Social Research Council/Department for International Development-funded research project on Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: Developing an Equity Scorecard (www.sussex.ac.uk/education/wideningparticipation). It argues that, while globally the higher education sector has become associated with economic development and the hyper modernisation of the knowledge economy, some archaic patterns of participation appear to be continuing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food crisis of 2007/8, alongside rapid population growth, and the uncertainties of climate change propelled African agricultural transformation back into the development mainstream. New narratives of 'climate-smart agriculture' and 'sustainable intensification' underlie this contemporary transformation. We present a political economy analysis of agricultural policy and livelihoods in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, and use this to assess the challenge of achieving 'sustainable and inclusive intensification'. We find little evidence that agricultural institutions have the capacity to deliver sustainable intensification in agriculture, or that agricultural policy drives changes in agricultural livelihoods that will make them either more sustainable or inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development projects are under pressure to deliver positive gender changes. This paper provides a practical example of how one project in Tanzania attempted to meet this demand. It details how a conventional technical project developed its own understanding of what it is to be gender sensitive, and identified gender concerns that it might address. The main monitoring challenges became those of how to assess the significance of routinely recorded events such as increased cow allocations to women, and how to incorporate monitoring activities that might focus on researching less obvious, less visible, and more subtle processes of change into the project cycle. The paper advocates giving greater attention to meeting these challenges within projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining projects affect the health of surrounding communities by inducing environmental, economic, social and cultural changes in different population groups. Health impact assessment (HIA) offers an opportunity to manage these impacts. This paper aims to explore gender differences of impacts on the wider determinants of health as described by communities impacted by industrial gold mining and consider the implications for impact assessment. We conducted 24 gender-separated, participatory focus group discussions at three study sites in northwestern Tanzania. Participants reported on a broad range of impacts on the wider determinants of health. Based on a thematic analysis, we identified gendered health impacts on men and women; in addition, children and adolescent boys and girls emerged as differently affected subpopulation groups. Located in the theory of the 'triple role of women', we suggest that different gender needs should be addressed more explicitly by HIA. Increased use of mitigation measures that recognise and address impacts on women's engendered roles, and their health, through addressing women's strategic gender needs, would strengthen HIA as a tool towards sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vision of food sovereignty calls for radical changes in agricultural, political and social systems related to food. These changes also entail addressing inequalities and asymmetries of power in gender relations. While women’s rights are seen as central to food sovereignty, given the key role women play in food production, procurement and preparation, family food security, and food culture, few attempts have been made to systematically integrate gender in food sovereignty analysis. This paper uses case studies of corporate agricultural expansion to highlight the different dynamics of incorporation and struggle in relation to women’s and men’s different position, class and endowments. These contribute to processes of social differentiation and class formation, creating rural communities more complex and antagonistic than those sketched in food sovereignty discourse and neo-populist claims of peasant egalitarianism, cooperation and solidarity. Proponents of food sovereignty need to address gender systematically, as a strategic element of its construct and not only as a mobilising ideology. Further, if food sovereignty is to have an intellectual future within critical agrarian studies, it must reconcile the inherent contradictions of the ‘we are all the same’ discourse, taking analysis of social differences as a starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gender plays an important role in education as most traditional societies give preference to boys over girls when it comes to educational opportunity. Increasing access to education for girls is important to the health and well-being of the individual, their future children, families, and communities. The objective of this paper is to understand the gender differences in educational outcomes for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) attending secondary schools in Uganda and Tanzania. The study employed a four-year, retrospective record review utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. A total of 5738 student records were collected as part of the study. Students were grouped as “ever supported” OVC (receiving educational support from either a block grant or scholarship program during their secondary school education), “never supported OVC” (OVC students who did not receive any educational support), and “nonOVC students” (students identified by the school as neither orphaned nor vulnerable). Results of the study indicate that investment in secondary school education for OVC in Uganda and Tanzania can make a difference in educational outcomes, both for boys and girls. Although there was no gender difference in absenteeism or dropout rate among students those who received educational support, stark differences were found in secondary school Year IV national examination pass rates with girls significantly less likely to pass compared to boys. The disparity in secondary school learning achievement between male and female students is of concern and warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of Tanzania's increasing female labour force participation (2000/2001 until 2006) and its government's efforts to promote gender balance, daily work and employment practices are still characterised by profound gender inequalities. This paper explores the hospitality industry and its gendered employment patterns, based on the case of Mwanza, Tanzania's second largest town. Data collected using questionnaires and qualitative interviews indicate that restaurants, hotels and bars provide low earnings and at the same time work with larger proportions of female staff. The results show that gender imbalances can be related to the preference for informal recruitment methods, to hiring authorities' gendered images of suitability and to processes of self-selection on the supply side of the labour market. Moreover, the significance of capitalist interests, patriarchal prescriptions and sexuality in determining the gender composition of organisations is confirmed. Further research needs to include the interplay between gender and age, and the complex and contradictory effects of sexuality at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from Tanzania and Zambia, this paper presents research which explores the gendered nature of solid waste management (SWM) in situations where services have been privatised or franchised out to community groups and small and medium enterprises. It concludes that whilst there is evidence of a traditional gendered division of labour, with notions of 'men's work' and 'women's work', there is also evidence of challenges to these gender roles and SWM has not only offered women employment, but also enabled women to become more empowered through increasing their income and developing meaningful civic activities. These findings suggest that, although there are problems relating to work in the informal economy, SWM offers women real opportunities to improve their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection of papers on Securing Women's Land Rights presents five articles relating to eastern Africa. Four of these illustrate practical approaches to securing land rights for women in distinct situations: law-making for women's land rights (Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda); land tenure reform in practice (Rwanda); women's rights under pastoral land tenure (Ethiopia); and women's rights in areas of matrilineal-matrilocal land tenure (Malawi). This article serves as an overall introduction to the subject, reviewing past issues and highlighting new ones, and setting out the shape of a positive, pragmatic approach to securing women's land rights in eastern Africa. Five key themes emerge: the role of customary institutions; the continuing central role of legislation as a foundation for changing custom; issues of gender equity and equitability, and underlying goals; the challenges of reform implementation and of growing women's confidence to claim their rights; and the importance of encouraging effective collaboration among all those working in the field of women's land rights. The article calls for a stronger focus on gender equity - on securing equal land rights for both women and men - in order to achieve sustainable positive change in broader social and political relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss to what extent the international and national equality goals regarding gender balance and inclusive education have been reached in the education sector development in Tanzania. According to recent reports, the development trend has been generally positive, and the country is close to achieving its primary education targets. More detailed reviews suggest, however, that current monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are too narrow to catch the critical factors regarding equality, particularly in secondary education. Our comment concerns the achievements and challenges, and emphasises the significance of a multidimensional set of information including in-depth qualitative research on connections between socio-cultural factors and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the diverse ways that children and young people negotiate their social identities and construct their life course trajectories on the street, based on ethnographic research with street children in Tanzania. Drawing on the concept of a ‘street career’, I show how differences of age, gender and ethnicity intersect with the time spent on the street, to influence young people's livelihood strategies, use of public space, access to services, and adherence to cultural rites of passage. Using the notion of ‘gender performativity’, I analyse how young people actively reconfigure gender norms and the concept of ‘the family’ on the street. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing magnitude of floods due to rainfall variability along the coastal zones of Tanzania. Repeated flooding occurrences in Dar es Salaam along the Msimbazi Valley provide evidence. The Valley has recorded floods from 2009 to 2021 consecutively. Floods have badly affected people and communities, leading to forced migration. Between 2020 and 2022, the study conducted interviews and focus group discussions with affected people to investigate gendered experiences of forced migrants and assess gender-sensitive strategies by individuals and government in reducing climate change impacts. The study revealed that firstly, reactive migration was a common strategy used by both individuals and the government (during floods in 2011); and secondly, women and children were the majority of the resettled households. The adaptive strategies to climatic change disasters were ineffective and gender insensitive. Increased women representation in decision-making would mitigate the impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that while differences exist between the sexes, human beings recognize certain basic common spatial constructions, which are common to all. It examines the relationship between sex and handedness in two groups of chimpanzees. One group lives in a wild animal park in a naturalistic setting, and may be described as semi-free-ranging; the other group is the Kasakela community of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. I.F. Marchant (1983) recorded six categories of behavior shown by 26 subjects living on islands in a safari park, Lion County, Florida. Lion County's captive apes were 12 females and 14 males. The behavioral patterns recorded at Lion County were those most commonly shown both socially and non-socially in object manipulation, although only one was tool-use. The paper presents a table that provides definitions of the behavioral categories used at Lion County, which were scored as left-, right-, or both-hands. The second study was done in the Gombe Stream National Park, a small well-protected park on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in western Tanzania. The main community, Kasakela, consisting of 19 females and 19 males, was studied.

The promotion of gender equality in access to productive resources relies on multiple valid arguments. However, whether equal resource endowment would result in equal agricultural productivity is controversial. Using panel data from Tanzania, we examine the agricultural technology levels of male and female managed plots, and find that female farmers operate on a significantly lower technology level than their male counterparts. Thus, even if female farmers used the same amount of agricultural inputs and were equally efficient as male farmers, they would probably still attain lower yields. We employ a matching and decomposition approach to analyse whether the difference in technology between male and female managed plots originates from observations outside the common support or different distributions of productive resources, household characteristics, or crop choice within the common support. We find that most plots under female and male management are well comparable and fall into the common support, but different distributions of considered characteristics cannot sufficiently explain the observed differences in levels of technology among female and male farmers. Only among the few farmers that apply inorganic fertilizer, female and male farmers work on a similar technology level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology & Society is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2016, a study was conducted in Tanzania to assess the impact of radio and SMS in scaling-up smallholder participation in legume-based sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) practices and technologies. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: (i) does participation in the campaign enhance farmers' knowledge of legume-based sustainable agricultural intensification practices and technologies? (ii) what is the impact of the campaign on the adoption of legume-based sustainable agricultural intensification practices and technologies?; (iii) does exposure to multiple ICT-enabled channels result in larger gains (in terms of knowledge and adoption) than exposure to only one channel? (iv) is it more cost-effective to use radio or SMS alone or use them in combination? The results show that both awareness and adoption are boosted if SMS supports radio campaigns. However, radio alone is the most cost-effective approach. Each dollar spent on the radio campaign results in 2.1 farmers that have adopted at least one new practice, compared with 0.5 farmers for SMS and 0.4 farmers for radio and SMS combined. Other factors were also important in facilitating uptake of legume-based SAI practices, such as gender, age, education and land size, but were not statistically significant when rated against the communication channels used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intimate partner violence is an important public health problem, with far-reaching consequences for women's physical and emotional health and social well-being. There is evidence that intimate partner violence is preventable. The MAISHA study, a randomised controlled trial of the impact of a gender training intervention on intimate partner violence for women in Tanzania, found that those who participated in gender training were less likely to report past-year physical violence. As part of the study, a sample of women participated in longitudinal qualitative enquiry. To better understand the processes of change associated with intimate partner violence prevention, we explored narratives from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with women who had participated in the training. The study drew on feminist political theory on agency and change, which we sought to understand in a setting with high rates of intimate partner violence that a standalone intervention was unlikely to change. The study found that gender training, which seeks to develop political consciousness and transformation, can promote a sense of efficacy amongst participants who feel validated through the collective learning process. Important yet under examined cognitive elements of change processes deserve more attention in the design, delivery and evaluation of violence prevention gender training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the nexus between old and new commons, anti-politics, and Corporate Social Responsibility measures in the context of on-going land grabbing. Detailed case studies in Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, and Tanzania show that powerful discourses of development, women's empowerment, and wasteland productivity increase serve as anti-politics machines that hide the fact that winners are few and losers many. Despite differential bargaining power mediated by class, age, lineage, or gender, some actors manage to take advantage of the situation: contrary to the often used tragedy metaphor, we argue that we are faced with an open-ended 'drama of the commons' which is still unfolding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent alcohol use remains an under-addressed population health issue across Africa. Although the literature explores the intersection of alcohol use and vulnerability to HIV and AIDS, there is limited evidence on the gendered uptake and use of alcohol among adolescents. Capturing adolescents' voiced experiences about the societal influences shaping their alcohol usage is essential for identifying contextually relevant interventions to reduce their vulnerability to alcohol and related risky behaviours, such as unsafe sex. We conducted qualitative research in urban Tanzania, including key informant interviews, systematic mapping of alcohol availability, in-depth interviews with adolescents in and out of school and adults, and participatory methodologies with adolescents ages 15-19. The findings described here were drawn from the participatory methodologies (n = 177); and in-depth interviews with adolescents (n = 24) and adults (n = 24). Three key themes emerged: (1) boys' increased social vulnerability to alcohol consumption; (2) the ways in which stigma shapes girls' alcohol usage; and (3) how gendered perceptions of alcohol use reinforce societal inequalities. There exists an urgent need to address the social and gendered vulnerabilities of youth in Africa to the uptake and use of alcohol, and identify interventions that reshape notions of masculinity increasing boy's vulnerability to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the panel survey for the Kagera region of Tanzania, we select children who were seven to 15 years old in the 1990s and follow up with them in the first decade of the 2000s to study the consequences of child labour on their status in employment in adulthood. We estimate fixed effects linear probability models. We find that child labour is associated with vulnerable employment and that this result is driven by girls. Age plays a crucial role in the determination of the sign of the child labour effect. On average, for children younger than 10 child labour has only negative effects. The negative effects of domestic chores are quite large: the probability of vulnerable employment increases considerably for girls under 13, up to 20 percentage points for 10-year-olds. Child labour on the household farm has even more adverse effects. Overall, these findings highlight the important role of child labour in the determination of the gender gap in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smallholder-based, sustainable, agricultural intensification is increasingly put forth as a development pathway that is necessary to improve farmer's livelihoods, enhance productivity and engender a surplus that can be used to feed growing urban areas across sub-Saharan Africa. The following article examines trends in yields for Africa's largest staple crop – maize – among smallholder farmers in six regions in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, using longitudinal quantitative data collected in 2008, 2013 and 2017 in combination with qualitative data from nine villages. Substantial increases in yields are found only in Zambia, while yields are largely stagnant in Malawi and Tanzania. In the case of Zambia, however, there is a persistent gender-based yield gap. We use the qualitative data to explain this gap and find that gender-based differences in yields need to be understood in relation to local production systems, as well as the varied positionality of women, where the biases facing women who head their own households are different than for women living in male headed households. In policy terms, technologies that can promote intensification are different depending on these factors, even within the local context of particular farming systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based legal aid (CBLA) has been promoted as a promising intervention to reach rural marginalized populations who face barriers to accessing formal legal services and is increasingly implemented with the specific goal of protecting women's rights. This study evaluates the impact of a twelve-month CBLA program in northwestern Tanzania on intrahousehold gender relations using a clustered-randomized control trial across 139 villages. Among 1,219 women, the study finds those in treatment villages are more likely to refer others to paralegals for a variety of domestic issues; however, there are no measureable impacts on aggregate knowledge of marital law, intrahousehold decision making, or reported experience of twelve-month intimate partner violence. These overall results are robust to a number of other sensitivity analyses, including accounting for spillovers, attrition bounds, and modeling choices. While these results indicate limited potential for intrahousehold and gender-progressive change, program duration and intensity likely affected measurable positive impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although ‘disrespectability’ has been discerned as an important discourse that accompanies Tanzanian women’s engagement in hospitality jobs, it remains unclear how they counter this devaluation and whether their male co-workers are affected as well. Using a life-story methodology with a sample of 20 male and female employees, this study shows how men and women are unevenly hit by the assignment of ‘shame’ and how they resist. Better pay and more professional training could improve workers’ standing, but might also trigger new processes of closure detrimental to gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Tanzania, younger voters have been more inclined to support opposition parties than their elders, who have proven relatively reluctant to look beyond the incumbent party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). A 'gender gap' also exists within Tanzanian politics. Women are more likely to be pro-CCM than men, who are comparatively open to a change of government. Based on qualitative data collected in Tanzania between 2013 and 2015, this article looks to explain these dynamics. Regarding the agerelated trend, it argues that young people tend to evaluate CCM less positively than older people due to the difference in their levels of experience of the party's evolving administrative style. They are also more likely to view the opposition favourably due to higher exposure to their message and a greater reluctance to accept attempts to discredit them. Concerning the gender gap, it contends that women's generally lower access to information results in their taking a less critical attitude towards CCM. They are also more likely than men to be dissuaded from voting for the opposition due to fear of potential violence. Furthermore, new patterns of political patronage have seen women targeted in CCM's vote buying exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the dynamics of ‘cultural difference’. It is based on the fieldwork among a group of Danish seniors at a three-week adult education course entitled ‘Global Citizenship’ in Tanzania with the Danish NGO Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke. The article analyses encounters between the Danes and their Tanzanian teachers. The article explores the training centre Danish, which hosted the course, as a chronotope in which ‘being Danish’ holds special meaning, and analyses how gender became a lens for depicting culture. The article concludes that normative hierarchical positionalities of gender equality vs. inequality were created in the interplay between students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rural African societies, socioeconomic differentiation linked to gender and social status exerts an important influence on the distribution of commonpool resources. Through a behavioral experiment conducted in 2008 in rural Tanzania, this contribution examines the influence of gender and social status on distribution behavior of users of self-governed common watersheds. It finds that men and women with low social status distribute water equally when water is abundant but keep larger shares when water is scarce, although low-status women try to be as fair as possible at the expense of their returns from irrigated agriculture. Men of high social status keep more than half of the available water for themselves, both in abundance and scarcity, and deprive others from sizeable returns from irrigated agriculture. Women of high social status share altruistically when water is abundant and equally when water is scarce, giving up on returns from irrigated agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Religion is an important aspect of Tanzanian culture, and is often used to cope with adversity and distress. This study aimed to examine religious coping among women with obstetric fistulae. Fifty-four women receiving fistula repair at a Tanzanian hospital completed a structured survey. The Brief RCOPE assessed positive and negative religious coping strategies. Analyses included associations between negative religious coping and key variables (demographics, religiosity, depression, social support and stigma). Forty-five women also completed individual in-depth interviews where religion was discussed. Although participants utilised positive religious coping strategies more frequently than negative strategies (p< .001), 76% reported at least one form of negative religious coping. In univariate analysis, negative religious coping was associated with stigma, depression and low social support. In multivariate analysis, only depression remained significant, explaining 42% of the variance in coping. Qualitative data confirmed reliance upon religion to deal with fistula-related distress, and suggested that negative forms of religious coping may be an expression of depressive symptoms. Results suggest that negative religious coping could reflect cognitive distortions and negative emotionality, characteristic of depression. Religious leaders should be engaged to recognise signs of depression and provide appropriate pastoral/spiritual counselling and general psychosocial support for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines the concept of gender mainstreaming and raises questions about a series of category slippages in debates and discussions. Some key concerns are the way in which women are constructed as a unified analytical category, and how gender equality is frequently reduced to issues of representation. It also critically interrogates how gender mainstreaming initiatives can be undermined by sexist practices such as sexual harassment. Focusing on higher education, it draws on empirical data from the research project 'Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: Developing an Equity Scorecard' (sussex.ac.uk/wphegt). Central arguments relate to the call for intersectional analyses and how GM needs to go beyond access and representation and address feminist concerns with the way in which gendered power and privilege are enacted in everyday social relations in higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The limited capacity of governments in developing countries to service primary health care has resulted in a rapid increase in use of indigenous medicinal plants. This increase, together with other biological and non-biological factors, has rendered these plants vulnerable to over-use and extirpation. Domestication is a conservation intervention that can relieve pressure on medicinal species. In order to ensure effectiveness and sustainability of an intervention, understanding the influencing factors is imperative. We examined the influence of gender and some socio-economic factors on domestication of medicinal plants in the West Usambara Mountains of northern Tanzania. Participatory wealth ranking, structured and semi-structured interviews, botanical surveys and participant observations were employed in data collection. Results showed that domestication has played a fundamental role in conservation of medicinal plants in the study area. Forty (89%) and twelve (27%) of forty-five indigenous plant species were domesticated on farms and around homesteads, respectively. A total of 89% of respondents (n = 173) had domesticated medicinal plants on their farms and around homesteads. Gender was the most important factor that influenced this practice, with more male-headed than female-headed households involved in the domestication effort. This can be attributed to social and cultural factors that, besides dispossessing women of tenure rights over resources and land, also subject them to heavy workloads and therefore diminish the time available for plant domestication. The number of domesticated medicinal plants also depended on age, affluence, farm size, household size and ethnicity. We recommend that agroforestry research should focus not only on integrating forest plants in farmlands, but also on cultural, socio-economic and institutional aspects affecting the whole system of domestication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid changes to the climate are predicted over the next few years, and these present challenges for women's empowerment and gender equality on a completely new scale. There is little evidence or research to provide a reliable basis for gender-sensitive approaches to agricultural adaptation to climate change. This article explores the gender dimensions of climate change, in relation to participation in decision-making, divisions of labour, access to resources, and knowledge systems. It draws on insights from recent research on agricultural adaptation to climate change in Tanzania. The article then explains why future gender-sensitive climate-adaptation efforts should draw upon insights from 'resilience thinking', 'political ecology', and environmental anthropology - as a way of embedding analysis of power struggles and cultural norms in the context of the overall socio-ecological system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbicides are a class of substances under development that could reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases when applied locally to genital mucosal surfaces. Microbicide acceptability research has largely focused on product characteristics, rather than processes of negotiation within relationships about use. Gender relations, decision-making power and communication within sexual relationships are recognised as important determinants of condom and contraceptive use, and are likely to determine microbicide use also. As part of social science research linked to the Microbicides Development Programme (MDP) we combine relationship-based theories with anthropological work conducted with women and men using a placebo gel. We explore communication and decision-making in gel and condom use, including constructions of risk and trust. During the MDP301 Phase III pilot study, in-depth interviews were conducted at sites in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Following four weeks of placebo gel use, women and their partners were asked about gel use and acceptability, partner involvement, sexual practices and condom use. Data from 45 couples at five sites were analysed using a grounded theory approach in NVivo. Participation in the study did not require women to inform their partners, yet our data shows women seeking permission from their partners, negotiating disclosure, exchanging information and persuading or motivating for gel use. Although gel was supposedly 'woman-controlled', men exercised considerable influence in determining whether and how it was used. Despite this, negotiations around use were largely successful, since the gel increased sexual pleasure and provided opportunities for intimate communication and the building of trust. Decisions about condom and microbicide use are made in a dyadic context and involve a complex negotiation of risk and trust. Whilst preferences relating to product characteristics are largely individual, use itself is dependent on partnership dynamics and the broader social context in which sexual risk management occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores narratives by elderly Sikh men and women about their arrival in Tanzania and highlights the significance of gender, ethnicity and social networks. The article argues that narratives provide rich accounts of the ways in which social capital, understood as resources held in networks, is influenced by social identities and place. It demonstrates that such nuances remain hidden in standard methods, such as surveys, generally used in the study of social capital. Furthermore, with a focus on the elderly migrants, the article illustrates that narratives have a particular affinity with migration, for like migrants they move across time and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between schooling for girls and HIV/AIDS prevention in the United Republic of Tanzania. It is based on a survey administered to upper-level primary school students in rural Tanzania designed to ascertain their numeracy and literacy skills as well as their knowledge of HIV/AIDS. The findings show that female students generally have stronger literacy and numeracy skills but less knowledge about HIV/AIDS than their male counterparts. This suggests that general education may not be the best vaccine against HIV/AIDS for young women; rather, AIDS-specific education and skills training may be required to increase the likelihood of prevention because of gender differences in how young people utilize knowledge acquired in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the shift in gender planning from Women in Development (WID) to Gender and Development (GAD), and explores why WID programs continue to dominate despite a general consensus that the GAD approach is superior. Drawing on the experience of organized women in Dar es Salaam. Tanzania, it is argued that not only are WID programs politically and practically easier to implement, but they may actually address the priorities of poor women, who, when given the space and support to undertake their own assessments of their interests, can then start to transform gendered power relations in their families and communities, It concludes that the distinction between WID and GAD is far from clear, as gender interests, like women themselves, are constantly changing and adapting in response to new opportunities, information, and environments. While a GAD approach to gender planning is superior, it is heartening to see that WID inspired interventions can sometimes lead to more empowering outcomes than we might expect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In most low-income countries, many women with high-risk pregnancies and complications do not reach the referral hospitals despite the provision of referral advice. Objective: To explore how antenatal maternal referral advice is understood and handled in a rural Tanzanian community. Methods: Individual in-depth interviews were conducted with six women who did not go to hospital and 13 people who were involved in the referral advice. Narrative analysis was used to describe and create meanings out of the decision-making process. Results: In all interviews, not following the referral advice was greatly influenced by close family members. Three main traits of how referral advice was understood emerged: convinced referral is not necessary, accepting referral advice but delayed by others, and passive and moving with the wind. The main reasons given for declining the referral advice included discrediting midwives’ advice, citing previous successful deliveries despite referral advice; being afraid of undergoing surgery; lack of support for care of siblings at home; and high costs incurred during referral. Conclusions: Declining maternal referral advice centred around the pregnant women’s position and their dependence on the family members around them, with a decreased ability to show autonomy. If they were socially and economically empowered, women could positively influence decision making during maternal referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]